Enhancing Motion Correction in T1-Weighted Abdominal MRI Through Outlier Removal and Overlapping Binning

Motivation: Respiratory motion creates blurring artifacts in abdominal MRIs for the liver and kidneys, preventing identification of tumors and blood vessels and optimal treatment administration. Goal(s): We aimed to increase respiratory data density, decrease motion, and maximize data utilization in each motion-state. Approach: We proposed a motion-correction method to remove respiratory irregularities and sort data into overlapping motion-states. We compared signal density and conspicuity of artifacts and organ structures for images reconstructed from the proposed and traditional methods. Results: Compared with the traditional method, the proposed method consistently increased data density by over 50% and produced more motion-robust images for inhale-states of irregular-breathing patients. Impact: Our proposed motion-correction method for T1-weighted abdominal MRIs increases respiratory data density to improve visibility of liver and kidney vessels and boundaries, supporting treatment for irregular-breathing and pediatric patients. This method may enhance dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI with temporal resolution constraints.