Abdominal DCE‐MRI reconstruction with deformable motion correction for liver perfusion quantification

Purpose Abdominal dynamic contrast‐enhanced (DCE) MRI suffers from motion‐induced artifacts that can blur images and distort contrast‐agent uptake curves. For liver perfusion analysis, image reconstruction with rigid‐body motion correction (RMC) can restore distorted portal‐venous input functions (PVIF) to higher peak amplitudes. However, RMC cannot correct for liver deformation during breathing. We present a reconstruction algorithm with deformable motion correction (DMC) that enables correction of breathing‐induced deformation in the whole abdomen. Methods Raw data from a golden‐angle stack‐of‐stars gradient‐echo sequence were collected for 54 DCE‐MRI examinations of 31 patients. For each examination, a respiratory motion signal was extracted from the data and used to reconstruct 21 breathing states from inhale to exhale. The states were aligned with deformable image registration to the end‐exhale state. Resulting deformation fields were used to correct back‐projection images before reconstruction with view sharing. Images with DMC were compared to uncorrected images and images with RMC. Results DMC significantly increased the PVIF peak amplitude compared to uncorrected images (P