A signal detection model for quantifying overregularization in nonlinear image reconstruction.

Many useful image quality metrics for evaluating linear image reconstruction techniques do not apply to or are difficult to interpret for nonlinear image reconstruction. The vast majority of metrics employed for evaluating nonlinear image reconstruction are based on some form of global image fidelity, such as image root mean square error (RMSE). Use of such metrics can lead to overregularization in the sense that they can favor removal of subtle details in the image. To address this shortcoming, we develop an image quality metric based on signal detection that serves as a surrogate to the qualitative loss of fine image details. The metric is demonstrated in the context of a breast CT simulation, where different equal-dose configurations are considered. The configurations differ in the number of projections acquired. Image reconstruction is performed with a nonlinear algorithm based on total variation constrained least-squares (TV-LSQ). The resulting images are studied as a function of three parameters: number of views acquired, total variation constraint value, and number of iterations. The images are evaluated visually, with image RMSE, and with the proposed signal-detection-based metric. The latter uses a small signal, and computes detectability in the sinogram and in the reconstructed image. Loss of signal detectability through the image reconstruction process is taken as a quantitative measure of loss of fine details in the image. Loss of signal detectability is seen to correlate well with the blocky or patchy appearance due to overregularization with TV-LSQ, and this trend runs counter to the image RMSE metric, which tends to favor the over-regularized images. The proposed signal detection-based metric provides an image quality assessment that is complimentary to that of image RMSE. Using the two metrics in concert may yield a useful prescription for determining CT algorithm and configuration parameters when nonlinear image reconstruction is used.

Convex recovery of continuous domain piecewise constant images from nonuniform Fourier samples.

We consider the recovery of a continuous domain piecewise constant image from its non-uniform Fourier samples using a convex matrix completion algorithm. We assume the discontinuities/edges of the image are localized to the zero level-set of a bandlimited function. This assumption induces linear dependencies between the Fourier coefficients of the image, which results in a two-fold block Toeplitz matrix constructed from the Fourier coefficients being low-rank. The proposed algorithm reformulates the recovery of the unknown Fourier coefficients as a structured low-rank matrix completion problem, where the nuclear norm of the matrix is minimized subject to structure and data constraints. We show that exact recovery is possible with high probability when the edge set of the image satisfies an incoherency property. We also show that the incoherency property is dependent on the geometry of the edge set curve, implying higher sampling burden for smaller curves. This paper generalizes recent work on the super-resolution recovery of isolated Diracs or signals with finite rate of innovation to the recovery of piecewise constant images.

A Fast Algorithm for Convolutional Structured Low-rank Matrix Recovery.

Fourier domain structured low-rank matrix priors are emerging as powerful alternatives to traditional image recovery methods such as total variation (TV) and wavelet regularization. These priors specify that a convolutional structured matrix, i.e., Toeplitz, Hankel, or their multi-level generalizations, built from Fourier data of the image should be low-rank. The main challenge in applying these schemes to large-scale problems is the computational complexity and memory demand resulting from a lifting the image data to a large scale matrix. We introduce a fast and memory efficient approach called the Generic Iterative Reweighted Annihilation Filter (GIRAF) algorithm that exploits the convolutional structure of the lifted matrix to work in the original un-lifted domain, thus considerably reducing the complexity. Our experiments on the recovery of images from undersampled Fourier measurements show that the resulting algorithm is considerably faster than previously proposed algorithms, and can accommodate much larger problem sizes than previously studied.

Off-the-Grid Recovery of Piecewise Constant Images from Few Fourier Samples.

We introduce a method to recover a continuous domain representation of a piecewise constant two-dimensional image from few low-pass Fourier samples. Assuming the edge set of the image is localized to the zero set of a trigonometric polynomial, we show the Fourier coefficients of the partial derivatives of the image satisfy a linear annihilation relation. We present necessary and sufficient conditions for unique recovery of the image from finite low-pass Fourier samples using the annihilation relation. We also propose a practical two-stage recovery algorithm which is robust to model-mismatch and noise. In the first stage we estimate a continuous domain representation of the edge set of the image. In the second stage we perform an extrapolation in Fourier domain by a least squares two-dimensional linear prediction, which recovers the exact Fourier coefficients of the underlying image. We demonstrate our algorithm on the super-resolution recovery of MRI phantoms and real MRI data from low-pass Fourier samples, which shows benefits over standard approaches for single-image super-resolution MRI.

ACCELERATED DYNAMIC MRI USING STRUCTURED LOW RANK MATRIX COMPLETION.

We introduce a fast structured low-rank matrix completion algorithm with low memory & computational demand to recover the dynamic MRI data from undersampled measurements. The 3-D dataset is modeled as a piecewise smooth signal, whose discontinuities are localized to the zero sets of a bandlimited function. We show that a structured matrix corresponding to convolution with the Fourier coefficients of the signal derivatives is highly low-rank. This property enables us to recover the signal from undersampled measurements. The application of this scheme in dynamic MRI shows significant improvement over state of the art methods.

STRUCTURED LOW-RANK RECOVERY OF PIECEWISE CONSTANT SIGNALS WITH PERFORMANCE GUARANTEES.

We derive theoretical guarantees for the exact recovery of piecewise constant two-dimensional images from a minimal number of non-uniform Fourier samples using a convex matrix completion algorithm. We assume the discontinuities of the image are localized to the zero level-set of a bandlimited function, which induces certain linear dependencies in Fourier domain, such that a multifold Toeplitz matrix built from the Fourier data is known to be low-rank. The recovery algorithm arranges the known Fourier samples into the structured matrix then attempts recovery of the missing Fourier data by minimizing the nuclear norm subject to structure and data constraints. This work adapts results by Chen and Chi on the recovery of isolated Diracs via nuclear norm minimization of a similar multifold Hankel structure. We show that exact recovery is possible with high probability when the bandlimited function describing the edge set satisfies an incoherency property. Finally, we demonstrate the algorithm on the recovery of undersampled MRI data.

A FAST ALGORITHM FOR STRUCTURED LOW-RANK MATRIX RECOVERY WITH APPLICATIONS TO UNDERSAMPLED MRI RECONSTRUCTION.

Structured low-rank matrix priors are emerging as powerful alternatives to traditional image recovery methods such as total variation (TV) and wavelet regularization. The main challenge in applying these schemes to large-scale problems is the computational complexity and memory demand resulting from a lifting of the image to a high-dimensional dense matrix. We introduce a fast and memory efficient algorithm that exploits the convolutional structure of the lifted matrix to work in the original non-lifted domain, thus considerably reducing the complexity. Our experiments on the recovery of MR images from undersampled measurements show that the resulting algorithm provides improved reconstructions over TV regularization with comparable computation time.

Generalized higher degree total variation (HDTV) regularization.

We introduce a family of novel image regularization penalties called generalized higher degree total variation (HDTV). These penalties further extend our previously introduced HDTV penalties, which generalize the popular total variation (TV) penalty to incorporate higher degree image derivatives. We show that many of the proposed second degree extensions of TV are special cases or are closely approximated by a generalized HDTV penalty. Additionally, we propose a novel fast alternating minimization algorithm for solving image recovery problems with HDTV and generalized HDTV regularization. The new algorithm enjoys a tenfold speed up compared with the iteratively reweighted majorize minimize algorithm proposed in a previous paper. Numerical experiments on 3D magnetic resonance images and 3D microscopy images show that HDTV and generalized HDTV improve the image quality significantly compared with TV.