ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neuroimaging
Sec. Brain Imaging Methods
Optimizing ultra-rapid compressed-sensing MPRAGE acquisitions for brain morphometry
Provisionally accepted
- 1Center for Brain Science and Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States
- 2Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, United States
- 3Swiss Innovation Hub, Siemens Healthineers International AG, Lausanne, Switzerland
- 4Department of Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital, Universite de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
- 5LTS5, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
- 6Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States
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Purpose: Compressed-sensing (CS) methods can decrease the acquisition time for T1-weighted (T1w) structural MRI images to 1-2 minutes. Rapid acquisitions reduce participant burden, reduce the risk of motion artifacts, and allow for repeat scans to be acquired within a session. This study investigated the tradeoffs of sparse sampling and CS image reconstruction for brain morphometric applications. Methods: Magnetization-Prepared Rapid Gradient Echo (MPRAGE) images were acquired at 1.0mm spatial resolution. The effects of the acceleration factor (x2 to x8) and regularization factor were examined. Subcortical volumes and regional cortical thickness estimates of brain structure were obtained for all T1w images. Within-sequence agreement was evaluated by comparing estimates obtained using the same protocol in the same imaging session. Between-sequence agreement was evaluated by comparing estimates from a fully sampled MPRAGE protocol to the novel CS-accelerated MPRAGE protocols within the same session. Results: Higher acceleration lowered the SNR in white matter but not in gray matter. SNR could be further manipulated by the regularization parameter. Within-sequence agreement was comparable across all protocols. In fact, the spread in estimates from the 58-second CSx8 protocol was similar to those from the fully sampled protocol. Similarly, high agreement was found between estimates from the fully sampled and under-sampled protocols for all acceleration levels up to eight. Modifying the regularization factor had a quantifiable effect on image smoothness, however it had minimal impact on the agreement of morphometric estimates. Conclusions: Accelerated CS imaging protocols show comparable performance to traditional longer protocols for morphometric brain estimates.
Keywords: MPRAGE = magnetization prepared rapid acquisition gradient echo, T1W = T1 weighted, Rapid MRI methods, Compressed Sensing (CS), brain morphometry
Received: 03 Oct 2025; Accepted: 01 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hanford, Hilbert, Kober, Buckner and Mair. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lindsay C. Hanford
Ross William Mair
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