Super-resolution Reconstruction of Fetal Craniofacial MRI

描述（由申请人提供）：本项目的总体目标是显著提高胎儿MRI用于颅面发育障碍的诊断、分析和预后的能力。这些疾病在所有人类出生缺陷中占四分之三，每500个活产婴儿中约有一个受到影响。颅面疾病可能会导致严重的长期问题，影响生活质量，并导致更高的疾病风险。提高对早期颅面发育和发育障碍的认识有助于更好的预后和治疗，更好的妊娠管理，改善新生儿护理和更好的长期结局。非侵入性医学成像技术是获取宫内胎儿信息的主要工具。产前超声检查通常在妊娠中期进行，被认为是主要的诊断工具。然而，超声对唇腭裂、半面矮小、小颌畸形等复杂颅面疾病的诊断准确率极低。另一方面，磁共振成像（MRI）已成为超声检查的一个很好的补充，可以准确诊断和分析这些复杂的疾病。尽管如此，胎儿MRI受限于二维采集，这是由于小的胎儿器官产生的小信号，以及间歇性的胎儿运动会破坏精确三维分析所需的空间编码。新的图像处理技术最近已被开发用于重建胎儿大脑的高分辨率三维MRI。这项技术已经导致胎儿神经成像的显着改善。然而，该技术不能直接或简单地适用于颅面结构的胎儿MRI;软组织、流体和颅颌面骨和半骨结构的非刚性和局部运动对体积重建提出了重大挑战。该提案的具体目标是开发颅面结构中的软组织、流体和骨骼的新模型以及基于这些模型的局部运动估计。这也将被认为是通过使用先进的图像正则化技术，没有明确的子体素运动估计。该提案的具体目标还涉及高分辨率胎儿颅面MRI的重建及其基于各种类型疾病的分类。收集的数据将与波士顿儿童医院的放射科医生以及FaceBase联盟的颅面专家社区共享。 公共卫生相关性：本项目将开发胎儿颅面结构的三维高空间分辨率MRI，以显著提高胎儿MRI对胎儿颅面疾病的诊断、分析、预后和治疗的能力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall objective of this project is to dramatically improve the capability of fetal MRI for diagnosis, analysis, and prognosis of craniofacial developmental disorders. These disorders present in three quarters of all human birth defects and affect approximately one in every 500 live births. Craniofacial disorders may cause serious long-term problems that affect the quality of life and result in higher disease risk. Improved knowledge of early craniofacial development and developmental disorders helps for better prognosis and treatment, better management of pregnancy, improved neonatal care, and better long-term outcomes. Non-invasive medical imaging techniques are the main tools to acquire information about the fetus in-utero. Prenatal sonography is routinely performed in the second trimester of pregnancy, and is considered to be the primary diagnostic tool. Nevertheless the diagnostic accuracy of sonography for complex craniofacial diseases such as cleft lip and cleft palate, hemifacial microsomia, micrognathia, etc. is extremely low. On the other hand magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become an excellent complement to sonography for accurate diagnosis and analysis of such complex diseases. Nonetheless, fetal MRI is limited to two-dimensional acquisitions by small signal available from the small fetal organs, and by intermittent fetal motion that disrupts spatial encoding necessary for accurate three-dimensional analysis. Novel image processing technology has recently been developed for the reconstruction of high-resolution three-dimensional MRI of the fetal brain. This technology has led to significant improvements in fetal neuroimaging. However, this technology cannot be directly or simply adapted to fetal MRI of craniofacial structures; the non-rigid and local movement of soft tissue, fluid, and craniomaxillofacial bones and semi-bony structures pose significant challenges in volume reconstruction. The specific aim of this proposal is the development of novel models of soft tissue, fluid, and bone in craniofacial structures and local motion estimation based on these models. This will also be considered through the use of advanced image regularization techniques without explicit sub-voxel motion estimation. The specific aims in this proposal also involve the reconstruction of high-resolution fetal craniofacial MRI and their classification based on various types of disorders. The collected data will be shared with radiologists at Children's Hospital Boston as well as with the greater community of craniofacial experts on FaceBase consortium. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Three dimensional high spatial resolution fetal MRI of craniofacial structures will be developed in this project to significantly improve the capability of fetal MRI for diagnosis, analysis, prognosis, and treatment of fetal craniofacial disorders.