A Method for Correcting Inter-Series motion in Brain MRI for Auto Scan Plane Planning

Introduction: Patient motion during Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a major degradation factor of MR image quality. In many cases, patient motion moves regions of interest prescribed by the operator out of the field of view and creates sub-optimal views for diagnosis. In this abstract, we propose an algorithm that relies on the known position and orientation of the patient anatomy at the beginning of a scanning session, and uses fast three-plane (3P) localizers to update patient position/orientation just before an image is acquired. The algorithm finds a rigid transform that best aligns the 3P localizers to the full volumetric localizer with known anatomy, which is acquired at the beginning of the scanning session. This rigid transform is then used to compensate for the patient motion and produce patient-centric scan plane prescription. This algorithm is shown to be effective in correcting for small motion, which is often observed during brain MR scans. We have incorporated this approach in a clinical MR system and demonstrated its usefulness in automatically obtaining consistent imaging planes in brain exams, even with the presence of patient motion.