Towards learned optimal q-space sampling in diffusion MRI

Fiber tractography is an important tool of computational neuroscience that enables reconstructing the spatial connectivity and organization of white matter of the brain. Fiber tractography takes advantage of diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) which allows measuring the apparent diffusivity of cerebral water along different spatial directions. Unfortunately, collecting such data comes at the price of reduced spatial resolution and substantially elevated acquisition times, which limits the clinical applicability of dMRI. This problem has been thus far addressed using two principal strategies. Most of the efforts have been extended towards improving the quality of signal estimation for any, yet fixed sampling scheme (defined through the choice of diffusion-encoding gradients). On the other hand, optimization over the sampling scheme has also proven to be effective. Inspired by the previous results, the present work consolidates the above strategies into a unified estimation framework, in which the optimization is carried out with respect to both estimation model and sampling design concurrently. The proposed solution offers substantial improvements in the quality of signal estimation as well as the accuracy of ensuing analysis by means of fiber tractography. While proving the optimality of the learned estimation models would probably need more extensive evaluation, we nevertheless claim that the learned sampling schemes can be of immediate use, offering a way to improve the dMRI analysis without the necessity of deploying the neural network used for their estimation. We present a comprehensive comparative analysis based on the Human Connectome Project data. Code and learned sampling designs available at https://github.com/tomer196/Learned_dMRI.