Method of SNR determination using clinical images

Abstract

Parallel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with arrays of receiver coils such as those of sensitivity encoding (SENSE) are being widely used. However, conventional methods of image signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) determination cannot be used for parallel MRI, and a novel method has been reported in JSRT. However, this method of SNR determination is for phantom images not for clinical images. Therefore, we researched accurate measurement of the image noise of parallel MRI reconstruction including the unfolding process and uniformity filters. The possibility of a subtraction method using clinical images and the accuracy of standard deviation (SD) of clinical images for optimum ROI were studied because it was not possible to use the air-signal method. The results indicated that the position of the ROI was selected for uniformity of signal intensity area and that the size of the ROI was about 50 pixels. However, under these conditions, the noise value of SNR was higher than that using the phantom-subtraction method. In addition, the tissue-subtraction method was useful when the two scanning images were in agreement.