Versatile motion-corrected brain MRI leveraging ERIC-PT: Efficient, Robust and Instruction-free Calibrated Pilot Tone

Motivation: Robust motion correction relies on sequence modifications, either adding navigators or re-ordering the k-space sampling. These modifications might not be possible for every sequence. Goal(s): To leverage motion-sensitive Pilot Tone (PT) signals to guide motion correction for any standard 3D acquisition. Approach: We propose the ERIC calibration protocol, which distributes short self-navigated (DISORDER) acquisitions across the whole examination. Combined with data-driven motion correction reconstructions, we can achieve robust PT calibration. Results: We show the potential to correct standard MPRAGE acquisitions with a linear phase encoding scheme in 4 healthy volunteers (HV) even when using 54 seconds worth of calibration data. Impact: Correcting motion in any 3D acquisition is an unsolved problem. Combining pre-calibrated PT signals with data-driven optimizations explores a promising avenue. To this end, building a robust calibration model by acquiring ~1min worth of data would easily integrate into examinations.