System and method for enhancing propeller image quality by denoising blades

A system for improving image quality of periodically rotated overlapping parallel lines with enhanced reconstruction (PROPELLER) imaging, comprising:

• a memory encoding processor-executable routines;
• and
• a processor configured to access the memory and to execute the processor-executable routines, wherein the routines, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
• acquire a plurality of blades of k-space data of a region of interest in a rotational manner around a center of k-space via a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner from a coil during a PROPELLER sequence, wherein each blade of the plurality of blades of k-space data comprises a plurality of parallel phase encoding lines sampled in a phase encoding order;
• utilize a deep learning-based denoising network to individually denoise each blade of the plurality of blades of k-space data to generate a plurality of denoised blades of k-space data, wherein the denoising occurs in a k-space domain;
• and
• utilize a PROPELLER reconstruction algorithm to generate a complex image from the plurality of denoised blades of k-space data.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium, the computer-readable medium comprising processor-executable code that when executed by a processor, causes the processor to:

• acquire a plurality of blades of k-space data of a region of interest in a rotational manner around a center of k-space via a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner from a coil during a periodically rotated overlapping parallel lines with enhanced reconstruction (PROPELLER) sequence, wherein each blade of the plurality of blades of k-space data comprises a plurality of parallel phase encoding lines sampled in a phase encoding order;
• utilize a deep learning-based denoising network to individually denoise each blade of the plurality of blades of k-space data to generate a plurality of denoised blades of k-space data, wherein the denoising occurs in a k-space domain;
• and
• utilize a PROPELLER reconstruction algorithm to generate a complex image from the plurality of denoised blades of k-space data.