Augmented generalized SENSE reconstruction to correct for rigid body motion

The correction of motion artifacts continues to be a significant problem in MRI. In the case of uncooperative patients, such as children, or patients who are unable to remain stationary, the accurate determination and correction of motion artifacts becomes a very important prerequisite for achieving good image quality. The application of conventional motion-correction strategies often produces inconsistencies in k-space data. As a result, significant residual artifacts can persist. In this work a formalism is introduced for parallel imaging in the presence of motion. The proposed method can improve overall image quality because it diminishes k-space inconsistencies by exploiting the complementary image encoding capacity of individual receiver coils. Specifically, an augmented version of an iterative SENSE reconstruction is used as a means of synthesizing the missing data in k-space. Motion is determined from low-resolution navigator images that are coregistered by an automatic registration routine. Navigator data can be derived from self-navigating k-space trajectories or in combination with other navigation schemes that estimate patient motion. This correction method is demonstrated by interleaved spiral images collected from volunteers. Conventional spiral scans and scans corrected with proposed techniques are shown, and the results illustrate the capacity of this new correction approach.