Developing an infant head motion phantom for clinical MRI studies
Supervisors: Rob Dineen, Paul Morgan, Don Sharkey, David Branson III
Research proposal
The Problem: Movement remains a major limitation when performing MRI on neonates and infants, leading to reduction in diagnostic quality of images or dependence on the use of sedation or anaesthetic which adds risk and cost. MRI manufacturers offer image acquisition techniques that minimise motion artefacts. However, evaluation and comparison of these techniques in neonates and infants is challenging due to variable sporadic motion throughout the acquisitions. Whereas cooperative adult volunteers can generate movements with enough reproducibility to allow comparison between techniques and platforms, this is clearly not feasible or ethical for infants. As such, direct comparison of image acquisition techniques to find the best solutions for clinical imaging of infants is lacking.
The Challenge: To produce an infant head MRI motion phantom with naturalistic patterns of movement that can be used for a highly standardised evaluation and comparison of motion minimisation / correction techniques for clinical image acquisition across MRI platforms and sites.
A medium-term goal of the NIHR Nottingham BRC is ‘To develop advanced motion correction, image analysis and statistical tools to facilitate efficient and cost-effective clinical application. (RA4)’. Our approach of providing a device for evaluating motion minimisation acquisition techniques will facilitate this goal and is complementary to approaches that optimise post-processing of images to reduce motion artefacts