Patent Document ID: 9519040
Application ID: 14677156
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A computerized method for generating a phase corrected magnetic resonance image comprising: (a) acquiring a first magnetic resonance image containing error and intrinsic phase information; (b) calculating two or more candidate input vector images from the acquired image; and (c) performing an optimized region growing based phase correction algorithm to determine an output vector image that is spatially smooth in orientation and is substantially represented at each pixel by one of the calculated vector images at the same pixel, wherein phase correction is performed by: selecting an initial seed pixel for a new thread of region growing and placing the initial seed pixel onto a highest priority pixel stack; selecting a pixel that is placed on a pixel stack with a highest priority order from a list of pixel stacks that hold unprocessed pixels; determining an updated vector pair for the selected pixel by jointly considering its input vector pair (A and B) with a reference vector pair (A r and B r ); placing each of neighboring pixels of the selected pixel onto one of pixel stacks according to a quality metric by jointly comparing an input vector pair of a neighbor pixel with a reference vector pair; recording and monitoring the priority and the mode of region growing for the selected pixel; using the recorded mode of region growing to determine which vector pairs need to be considered and which vector of the updated vector pair is a correct vector; and performing a final pixel-level optimization in which a vector O of a pixel is assigned as its original input vector A or B depending on if A or B has a smaller angular difference with the locally average O of the pixel over a selected boxcar.