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Accelerated high-resolution anatomical MRI at 11.7T using SPARKLING


Thesis topic details

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-25-0372  

Direction

DRF

Thesis topic details

Category

Life Sciences

Thesis topics

Accelerated high-resolution anatomical MRI at 11.7T using SPARKLING

Contract

Thèse

Job description

Magnetic resonance Imaging (MRI) has become the reference neuroimaging technique for probing brain structure and function non-invasively. In particular, anatomical MRI is a gold standard for clinical imaging diagnosis and research, with T1-weighted imaging being the most commonly used sequence. However, the use of this imaging modality is limited by long acquisition times, especially for high resolution anatomical imaging. In this regard, non-Cartesian sampling can accelerate acquisitions through flexible sampling trajectories like SPARKLING, which can efficiently sample k-space and allow efficient and optimal iterative reconstructions with minimal degradation in image quality. In this PhD thesis, the SPARKLING framework which was originally developed for T2*-w imaging will be extended to MPRAGE T1-w imaging, with a goal to accelerate the acquisitions by a factor of 10-15 times, thereby allowing us to reach 1-mm isotropic acquisitions within a minute. Additionally, for extensions of anatomical imaging schemes involving redundant sampling at different inversion times (TI) like MP2RAGE, we propose a novel interleaved under-sampling acquisition and corresponding reconstruction scheme, which minimizes redundancy across different readouts, allowing us to maximally accelerate the acquisition process. In practice, this is achieved through 3D+time extension of the SPARKLING algorithm, that can be combined through the proposed 4D reconstruction scheme. Finally, the thesis will also focus on characterizing the noise profile in k-space for non-Cartesian acquisitions and its effect on the observed resolution in the reconstructed MR images. This will help us build SNR-optimized sampling trajectories, which will be validated against state-of-the-art and clinically utilized protocols (like MP2RAGE) at varying field strengths from 3T to 11.7T. Benchmarking of all the acquisition schemes will be performed through quantitative metrics and also qualitative radiological evaluations, through collaboration of radiologists at NeuroSpin and AP-HP Henri Mondor hospital.

University / doctoral school

Physique et Ingénierie: électrons, photons et sciences du vivant (EOBE)
Paris-Saclay

Thesis topic location

Site

Saclay

Requester

Position start date

01/10/2025

Person to be contacted by the applicant

GILIYAR RADHAKRISHNA Chaithya chaithya.gr@cea.fr
CEA
DRF/JOLIOT/NEUROSPIN/MIND (ex PARIETAL)
#1011, NeuroSpin, CEA Paris Saclay
+33169088693

Tutor / Responsible thesis director

Vignaud Alexandre alexandre.vignaud@cea.fr
CEA
DRF/JOLIOT/NEUROSPIN/BAOBAB/METRIC
NeuroSpin bat 145
CEA Saclay
91191 Gif Sur Yvette
France
06-52-69-74-87

En savoir plus



https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mrm.29702