Self-driving Fetal Brain MRI
Adaptive imaging plane prescription for prospective motion correction in fetal brain MRI
Abstract
To diagnose fetal neurodevelopmental abnormalities, radiologists rely on stacks of high-resolution T2-weighted 2D anatomical (HASTE) slices acquired along the axial, sagittal, and coronal planes. Head motion between consecutive slices hinders radiological interpretability by producing double-oblique slices and introducing unintended gaps in spatial brain coverage. In current clinical practice, this necessitates re-acquisition of the whole stack, leading to long scan times and limited diagnostic utility if no high quality stack can be acquired. Before every HASTE readout, we insert a fast EPI volumetric navigator (EPI-vNav) that is used to estimate the current fetal head pose, center the next EPI-vNav on the head, and translate/rotate the HASTE imaging plane to account for the head motion. We implemented our automated acquisition system on a 3T fetal MRI scanner. In preliminary in utero experiments, the EPI-vNavs and HASTE slices acquired by our method accurately follow the translational and full rigid movements of the fetal head in real time. Furthermore, our HASTE stacks demonstrate mitigated motion effects compared to those acquired without any motion correction. Our work promises to improve radiological assessments, reduce scan time, and alleviate pregnant patients’ discomfort.
Method
