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