A proposal for full-range fat fraction estimation using magnitude MR imaging

• Ano de defesa: 2018
• Autor(a) principal: Costa, Yuri Ajala da
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Fígado; Fração de gordura hepática; Liver; Magnetic resonance; Neural networks; Proton density fat fraction; Quantificação e estimação; Quantification and estimation; Redes neurais; Ressonância magnética
• Link de acesso: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/18/18152/tde-01102018-083519/

Current methods for estimation of proton density fat fraction (PDFF) of the liver using magnitude magnetic resonance (MR) imaging face the challenge of correctly estimating it when fat is the dominant molecule, i.e. PDFF is more than 50%. Therefore, the accuracy of the methods is limited to half-range operation. We introduce a method based on neural networks for regression capable of estimating over the full range of fat fractions. We built a neural network based on the angles and distances between the data in the discrete MR signal (ADALIFE), using these as features associated to different PDFFs and as input for the network. Tests were performed assessing ADALIFE against dual echo, triple echo, and especially Multi-interference, a state-of-the-art method to estimate PDFFs, with simulated signals at various signal-to-noise (SNR) values. Results were compared in order to verify repeatability and agreement using regression analysis, Bland-Altman and REC curves. Results for Multi-interference were similar to its in-vivo literature, showing the relevance of a simulation. ADALIFE was able to correctly estimate fat fractions up to 100%, breaking the current paradigm for full-range estimation using only off-line post processing. Within half-range, our method outperformed Multi-interference in repeatability and agreement, with narrower limits of agreement and lower expected error at any SNR.