TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fortin, Marc-Antoine
AU  - Stirnberg, Rüdiger
AU  - Völzke, Yannik
AU  - Lamalle, Laurent
AU  - Pracht, Eberhard
AU  - Löwen, Daniel
AU  - Stöcker, Tony
AU  - Goa, Pal Erik
TI  - MPRAGElike: A novel approach to generate T1w images from multi-contrast gradient echo images for brain segmentation.
JO  - Magnetic resonance in medicine
VL  - 94
IS  - 1
SN  - 1522-2594
CY  - New York, NY [u.a.]
PB  - Wiley-Liss
M1  - DZNE-2025-00562
SP  - 134 - 149
PY  - 2025
AB  - Brain segmentation and multi-parameter mapping (MPM) are important steps in neurodegenerative disease characterization. However, acquiring both a high-resolution T1w sequence like MPRAGE (standard input to brain segmentation) and an MPM in the same neuroimaging protocol increases scan time and patient discomfort, making it difficult to combine both in clinical examinations.A novel approach to synthesize T1w images from MPM images, named MPRAGElike, is proposed and compared to the standard technique used to produce synthetic MPRAGE images (synMPRAGE). Twenty-three healthy subjects were scanned with the same imaging protocol at three different 7T sites using universal parallel transmit RF pulses. SNR, CNR, and automatic brain segmentation results from both MPRAGElike and synMPRAGE were compared against an acquired MPRAGE.The proposed MPRAGElike technique produced higher SNR values than synMPRAGE for all regions evaluated while also having higher CNR values for subcortical structures. MPRAGE was still the image with the highest SNR values overall. For automatic brain segmentation, MPRAGElike outperformed synMPRAGE when compared to MPRAGE (median Dice Similarity Coefficient of 0.90 versus 0.29 and Average Asymmetric Surface Distance of 0.33 versus 2.93 mm, respectively), in addition to being simple, flexible, and considerably more robust to low image quality than synMPRAGE.The MPRAGElike technique can provide a better and more reliable alternative to synMPRAGE as a substitute for MPRAGE, especially when automatic brain segmentation is of interest and scan time is limited.
KW  - Humans
KW  - Brain: diagnostic imaging
KW  - Brain: anatomy & histology
KW  - Male
KW  - Adult
KW  - Female
KW  - Algorithms
KW  - Magnetic Resonance Imaging: methods
KW  - Image Processing, Computer-Assisted: methods
KW  - Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted: methods
KW  - Reproducibility of Results
KW  - Image Enhancement: methods
KW  - Signal-To-Noise Ratio
KW  - Sensitivity and Specificity
KW  - UHF‐MRI (Other)
KW  - brain segmentation (Other)
KW  - multi‐contrast (Other)
KW  - multi‐parameter mapping (Other)
KW  - neuroimaging (Other)
KW  - synthetic MPRAGE (Other)
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:39902546
C2  - pmc:PMC12021339
DO  - DOI:10.1002/mrm.30453
UR  - https://pub.dzne.de/record/278071
ER  -