Andreas Hauptmann

Model-Based Learning for Accelerated, Limited-View 3-D Photoacoustic Tomography

Recent advances in deep learning for tomographic reconstructions have shown great potential to create accurate and high quality images with a considerable speed up. In this paper, we present a deep neural network that is specifically designed to provide high resolution 3-D images from restricted photoacoustic measurements. The network is designed to represent an iterative scheme and incorporates gradient information of the data fit to compensate for limited view artifacts. Due to the high complexity of the photoacoustic forward operator, we separate training and computation of the gradient information. A suitable prior for the desired image structures is learned as part of the training. The resulting network is trained and tested on a set of segmented vessels from lung computed tomography scans and then applied to in-vivo photoacoustic measurement data.

A DATA-DRIVEN EDGE-PRESERVING D-BAR METHOD FOR ELECTRICAL IMPEDANCE TOMOGRAPHY

In Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT), the internal conductivity of a body is recovered via current and voltage measurements taken at its surface. The reconstruction task is a highly ill-posed nonlinear inverse problem, which is very sensitive to noise, and requires the use of regularized solution methods, of which D-bar is the only proven method. The resulting EIT images have low spatial resolution due to smoothing caused by low-pass filtered regularization. In many applications, such as medical imaging, it is known a priori that the target contains sharp features such as organ boundaries, as well as approximate ranges for realistic conductivity values. In this paper, we use this information in a new edge-preserving EIT algorithm, based on the original D-bar method coupled with a deblurring flow stopped at a minimal data discrepancy. The method makes heavy use of a novel data fidelity term based on the so-called CGO sinogram. This nonlinear data step provides superior robustness over traditional EIT data formats such as current-to-voltage matrices or Dirichlet-to-Neumann operators, for commonly used current patterns.

A variational reconstruction method for undersampled dynamic x-ray tomography based on physical motion models

In this paper we study the reconstruction of moving object densities from undersampled dynamic x-ray tomography in two dimensions. A particular motivation of this study is to use realistic measurement protocols for practical applications, i.e. we do not assume to have a full Radon transform in each time step, but only projections in few angular directions. This restriction enforces a space-time reconstruction, which we perform by incorporating physical motion models and regularization of motion vectors in a variational framework. The methodology of optical flow, which is one of the most common methods to estimate motion between two images, is utilized to formulate a joint variational model for reconstruction and motion estimation. We provide a basic mathematical analysis of the forward model and the variational model for the image reconstruction. Moreover, we discuss the efficient numerical minimization based on alternating minimizations between images and motion vectors. A variety of results are presented for simulated and real measurement data with different sampling strategy. A key observation is that random sampling combined with our model allows reconstructions of similar amount of measurements and quality as a single static reconstruction.

Direct inversion from partial-boundary data in electrical impedance tomography

In Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) one wants to image the conductivity distribution of a body from current and voltage measurements carried out on its boundary. In this paper we consider the underlying mathematical model, the inverse conductivity problem, in two dimensions and under the realistic assumption that only a part of the boundary is accessible to measurements. In this framework our data are modeled as a partial Neumann-to-Dirichlet map (ND map). We compare this data to the full-boundary ND map and prove that the error depends linearly on the size of the missing part of the boundary. The same linear dependence is further proved for the difference of the reconstructed conductivities -- from partial and full boundary data. The reconstruction is based on a truncated and linearized D-bar method. Auxiliary results include an extrapolation method to obtain the full-boundary data from the measured one, an approximation of the complex geometrical optics solutions computed directly from the ND map as well as an approximate scattering transform for reconstructing the conductivity. Numerical verification of the convergence results and reconstructions are presented for simulated test cases.

Real‐time cardiovascular MR with spatio‐temporal artifact suppression using deep learning–proof of concept in congenital heart disease

Real‐time assessment of ventricular volumes requires high acceleration factors. Residual convolutional neural networks (CNN) have shown potential for removing artifacts caused by data undersampling. In this study, we investigated the ability of CNNs to reconstruct highly accelerated radial real‐time data in patients with congenital heart disease (CHD).

Approximation of full-boundary data from partial-boundary electrode measurements

Measurements on a subset of the boundary are common in electrical impedance tomography, especially because any electrode model can be interpreted as a partial-boundary problem. The information obtained is different to full-boundary measurements as modelled by the ideal continuum model. In this study we discuss an approach to approximate full-boundary data from partial-boundary measurements that is based on the knowledge of the involved projections. The approximate full-boundary data can then be obtained as the solution to a suitable optimization problem on the coefficients of the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map. By this procedure we are able to improve the reconstruction quality of continuum model-based algorithms, in particular we present the effectiveness with a D-bar method. Reconstructions are presented for noisy simulated and real measurement data.