General information
Organisation
The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation in four main areas :
• defence and security,
• nuclear energy (fission and fusion),
• technological research for industry,
• fundamental research in the physical sciences and life sciences.
Drawing on its widely acknowledged expertise, and thanks to its 16000 technicians, engineers, researchers and staff, the CEA actively participates in collaborative projects with a large number of academic and industrial partners.
The CEA is established in ten centers spread throughout France
Reference
SL-DRF-26-0202
Direction
DRF
Thesis topic details
Category
Life Sciences
Thesis topics
Super-resolution of brain MR images: from research to the clinic through machine learning approaches.
Contract
Thèse
Job description
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has become a reference modality for diagnosing and monitoring neurological disorders. However, acquiring high-resolution (HR) brain images remains challenging in clinical practice due to limited scan time, patient comfort constraints, and image degradation caused by patient motion. The increased signal enabled by higher magnetic field strengths can be invested to achieve higher spatial resolution within the same acquisition time. This project aims at taking advantage of the unprecedented spatial resolution achievable with the 11.7T Iseult MRI scanner, currently the most powerful MR scanner in the world, to train a machine learning-based super-resolution (SR) model that enhances the spatial resolution of 3T MRI images acquired in clinical practice. Current SR approaches are typically trained on public datasets, using pairs of high- and low-resolution images, with the low-resolution data synthetically generated from the high-resolution images. In this project we will use a real dataset consisting of 3T and 11.7T images acquired from the same cohort, ensuring higher anatomical fidelity and enabling a rigorous assessment of hallucination risks, i.e. of generating anatomically incorrect details that could be misinterpreted by the radiologists. The project will involve the following steps: improving the quality of 11.7T images (through motion correction and artifact reduction), acquiring pairs of images at 3T and 11.7T, developing and validating SR models, and finally assessing their generalizability on public datasets. This work supports the integration of reliable SR methods into clinical practice, allowing conventional MRI scanners to benefit indirectly from Iseult's unique capabilities.
University / doctoral school
Physique et Ingénierie: électrons, photons et sciences du vivant (EOBE)
Paris-Saclay
Thesis topic location
Site
Saclay
Requester
Position start date
01/09/2026
Person to be contacted by the applicant
LE STER Caroline
caroline.lester@cea.fr
CEA
DRF/JOLIOT/NEUROSPIN/BAOBAB/METRIC
Neurospin, Bâtiment 145
CEA/Saclay
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette
0169085591
Tutor / Responsible thesis director
Boulant Nicolas
nicolas.boulant@cea.fr
CEA
DRF/JOLIOT/NEUROSPIN/BAOBAB/METRIC
CEA-Saclay
Neurospin, Bat. 145
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex
+33 1 69 08 76 82
En savoir plus
https://metric.neurospin.fr/