SmartBlade: AI-based reconstruction for motion robust abdominal PROPELLER imaging

Motivation: The motion correction in PROPELLER is typically limited to rigid body motion and only the averaging effect is exploited for motion artifact reduction for abdominal scans. Goal(s): Our goal was to reduce motion artifacts and improve image quality in abdominal MRI. Approach: We proposed an AI framework for reconstructing high-resolution motion-free image from a free-breathing abdominal PROPELLER scan. The AI model was trained on synthetic data and tested on abdominal T2W TSE scans. Results: The proposed AI reconstruction outperforms the conventional PROPELLER reconstruction and PROPELLER with non-rigid motion correction in terms of residual motion artifacts and general image quality. Impact: The proposed AI-based reconstruction allows obtaining motion-free images with high-spatial resolution from PROPELLER MRI scans, which facilitates abnormality detection.