Joint reconstruction of DCE Abdominal Images

Purpose: An abdominal dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) examination typically consists of a series offive or more images acquired with the same imaging sequence, FOV, and resolution during multiplebreath-holds. The resulting images represent the same anatomy, but differ due to contrast agent arrival andwash-out. The time constraints, posed due to restricted breath-hold duration and contrast arrival,necessitate parallel imaging. Compressed sensing (CS)can potentially improve the temporal and spatialresolution of such image series1further. Different approaches for CS in dynamic imaging were previouslyproposed, for example low rank and sparse matrix decomposition2. These approaches were primarilytailored to dynamic cardiac imaging. However, in abdominal DCE, the contrast agent injection can make itmore difficult for the patient to hold their breath properly, resulting in severe artifacts after contrastinjection. Data are acquired with a modified adaptive sampling pattern3, which implies higherundersampling for shorter breath-holds. The post-contrast images should, therefore, benefit from a jointreconstruction of pre- and post-contrast images.