Computationally Efficient IMplicit Training Strategy for UNrolled NEtworks (IMUNNE): A preliminary analysis using accelerated real-time cardiac cine MRI.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Highly-undersampled, dynamic MRI reconstruction, particularly in multi-coil scenarios, is a challenging inverse problem. Unrolled networks achieve state-of-the-art performance in MRI reconstruction but suffer from long training times and extensive GPU memory cost. METHODS: In this work, we propose a novel training strategy for IMplicit UNrolled NEtworks (IMUNNE) for highly-undersampled, multi-coil dynamic MRI reconstruction. It formulates the MRI reconstruction problem as an implicit fixed-point equation and leverages gradient approximation for backpropagation, enabling training of deep architectures with fixed memory cost. This study represents the first application of implicit network theory in the context of real-time cine MRI. The proposed method is evaluated using a prospectively undersampled, real-time cine dataset using radial k-space sampling, comprising balanced steady-state free precession (b-SSFP) readouts. Experiments include a hyperparameter search, head-to-head comparisons with a complex U-Net (CU-Net) and an alternating unrolled network (Alt-UN), and an analysis of robustness under noise perturbations; peak signal-to-noise ratio, structural similarity index, normalized root mean-square error, spatio-temporal entropic difference, and a blur metric were used. RESULTS: IMUNNE produced significantly and slightly better image quality compared to CU-Net and Alt-UN, respectively. Compared with Alt-UN, IMUNNE significantly reduced training and inference times, making it a promising approach for highly-accelerated, multi-coil real-time cine MRI reconstruction. CONCLUSION: IMUNNE strategy successfully applies unrolled networks to image reconstruction of highly-accelerated, real-time radial cine MRI. SIGNIFICANCE: Implicit training enables rapid, high-quality, and cost-effective CMR exams by reducing training and inference times and lowering memory cost associated with advanced reconstruction methods.