Method and apparatus for acquiring overlapped medical image slices
AssigneeWashington University
InventorsMadelyn Milagros Stazzone, Omar G. El-Ghazzawy, Fred William Prior
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Abstract
The disclosure describes a technique for medical imaging, referred to herein as the Rapid Interleave Overlap Technique (RIOT), wherein image data is acquired as a plurality of series sequences in a manner that allows for unlimited overlap. RIOT involves interleaving and overlapping 2D image slices of multiple series of image data of the same ROI into a composite data set from which MPR and 3D reconstructions exhibiting excellent resolution properties and crisp image quality can be generated.
Claims42
A method of acquiring medical image data of a patient's region of interest, the method comprising:
- acquiring, by a magnetic resonance (MR) scanner, an image data series of a patient's region of interest starting from an initial table position in a coordinate system corresponding to a table position for the MR scanner, the image data series comprising a plurality of MR image slices, the image slices having a predetermined skip therebetween, each image slice having a predetermined slice thickness;
- repeating the acquiring step using the same image slice thickness and the same skip between image slices with an adjusted initial table position in the coordinate system until a desired degree of overlap between the plurality of acquired image data series is achieved;
- aggregating the plurality of image slices from the plurality of acquired image data series into a composite data file, wherein each image slice in the composite data file comprises header information;
- and
- automatically sorting the image slices in the composite data file by the table position at which each image slice was acquired by executing a software program configured to process each image slice's header information to identify how the image slices are to be sorted by the table position at which each image slice was acquired.
A method of controlling a medical image scanner to acquire image slices of a patient's region of interest, the method comprising:
- instructing the scanner to acquire a first series of image slices starting from an initial table position TP(0) for the scanner, the image slices of the first series having a slice thickness of n mm and a predetermined skip therebetween;
- after the scanner acquires the first series of images slices, adjusting the initial table position to TP(n/k mm);
- instructing the scanner to acquire a next series of image slices starting from the adjusted initial table position, the image slices of the next series having the same slice thickness n and the same skip as the image slices of the first series;
- and
- repeating the adjusting step and the next series acquiring step until a desired degree of overlap is achieved, wherein the adjusting and the next series acquiring steps are repeated such that the table position is adjusted by units of n/k mm for each series, wherein the value of k is determined at least partially as a function of the desired degree of overlap.
A computer readable storage medium for processing a plurality of image slices of a region of interest (ROI) in a composite data file, each image slice having been acquired at a different table position, wherein the image slices in the composite data file are out of order in terms of the table position at which they were acquired, and wherein each image slice comprises header information, the computer readable storage medium comprising:
- a code segment executable by a processor and resident on the computer-readable storage medium for processing the header information of the slices to determine the table position at which each slice was acquired;
- and
- a code segment executable by a processor and resident on the computer-readable storage medium for sorting the image slices in the composite data file in order by each image slice's determined table position.
A system for acquiring medical image data of a patient's region of interest (ROI), the system comprising:
- an image scanner for generating a plurality of image slices of a patient's ROI;
- and
- an image scanner controller in communication with the image scanner, the image scanner controller being configured to provide a plurality of instructions to the scanner that define how the scanner will acquire the image slices;
- and
- wherein the image scanner controller is configured to execute a software program, the software program being configured to (1) instruct the scanner perform an acquisition of an image data series of a patient's region of interest starting from an initial position in a coordinate system, the image data series comprising a plurality of image slices having a predetermined skip therebetween, each image slice having a predetermined slice thickness, and (2) further instruct the scanner to repeat the acquisition using the same image slice thickness and the same skip between image slices but with an adjusted initial position in the coordinate system until a desired degree of overlap between the plurality of acquired image data series is achieved.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.