MoRe-3DGSMR: Motion-resolved reconstruction framework for free-breathing pulmonary MRI based on 3D Gaussian representation

Abstract: This study presents an unsupervised, motion-resolved reconstruction framework for high-resolution, free-breathing pulmonary magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), utilizing a three-dimensional Gaussian representation (3DGS). The proposed method leverages 3DGS to address the challenges of motion-resolved 3D isotropic pulmonary MRI reconstruction by enabling data smoothing between voxels for continuous spatial representation. Pulmonary MRI data acquisition is performed using a golden-angle radial sampling trajectory, with respiratory motion signals extracted from the center of k-space in each radial spoke. Based on the estimated motion signal, the k-space data is sorted into multiple respiratory phases. A 3DGS framework is then applied to reconstruct a reference image volume from the first motion state. Subsequently, a patient-specific convolutional neural network is trained to estimate the deformation vector fields (DVFs), which are used to generate the remaining motion states through spatial transformation of the reference volume. The proposed reconstruction pipeline is evaluated on six datasets from six subjects and bench-marked against three state-of-the-art reconstruction methods. The experimental findings demonstrate that the proposed reconstruction framework effectively reconstructs high-resolution, motion-resolved pulmonary MR images. Compared with existing approaches, it achieves superior image quality, reflected by higher signal-to-noise ratio and contrast-to-noise ratio. The proposed unsupervised 3DGS-based reconstruction method enables accurate motion-resolved pulmonary MRI with isotropic spatial resolution. Its superior performance in image quality metrics over state-of-the-art methods highlights its potential as a robust solution for clinical pulmonary MR imaging.