Joint reconstruction and motion correction of the fetal brain T2 maps

Motivation: Our previously proposed pipeline for measuring T2 involves obtaining three stacks at three echo times (TE), totalling nine stacks, to produce 3D motion-corrected T2 maps. Here, we propose updates to streamline the process, reduce data requirements, and improve the usability of the previous pipeline. Goal(s): Update the pipeline to jointly reconstruct all the stacks together to directly produce a T2 map. Approach: Reconstruct a multi-channel volume from all the stacks to which a dictionary is fitted to generate the T2 map. Validate the method on a simulated phantom. Results: We find that the update improves robustness to motion and reduces data requirement. Impact: This should improve the usability of the previously proposed T2 measurement pipeline and allow for faster scan times as less data is required as well as improve robustness to motion when all nine stacks are used.