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Review
. 2017 May 30:8:232.
doi: 10.3389/fneur.2017.00232. eCollection 2017.

Are Movement Artifacts in Magnetic Resonance Imaging a Real Problem?-A Narrative Review

Affiliations
Review

Are Movement Artifacts in Magnetic Resonance Imaging a Real Problem?-A Narrative Review

Inger Havsteen et al. Front Neurol. .

Abstract

Movement artifacts compromise image quality and may interfere with interpretation, especially in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications with low signal-to-noise ratio such as functional MRI or diffusion tensor imaging, and when imaging small lesions. High image resolution has high sensitivity to motion artifacts and often prolongs scan time that again aggravates movement artifacts. During the scan fast imaging techniques and sequences, optimal receiver coils, careful patient positioning, and instruction may minimize movement artifacts. Physiological noise sources are motion from respiration, flow and pulse coupled to cardiac cycles, from the swallowing reflex and small spontaneous head movements. Par example, in resting-state functional MRI spontaneous neuronal activity adds 1-2% of signal change, even under optimal conditions signal contributions from physiological noise remain a considerable fraction hereof. Movement tracking during imaging may allow for prospective correction or postprocessing steps separating signal and noise.

Keywords: acute stroke imaging; dynamic magnetic resonance imaging; motion artifacts; motion tracking; noise reduction.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Coronal reconstruction of echo planar images (EPI) in volume without motion (volume 60, left) and volume with motion artifacts (volume 305, right). The striped appearance of volume 305 arises from the interleaved EPI sequence used. Two movement measures are shown: (A) Euclidian translational displacement in millimeter and (B) DVARS (percent mean signal change) as defined in Ref. (5). In this study of children, with liberal chosen movement thresholds, we discarded volumes exceeding threshold and marked in red.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Three and (B) 20-gradient direction diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) images of 68 years female with 2 h lasting transient ischemic attack symptoms including right hand paresis and slurred speech. In (B), note the occipital ring artifact, blurred contours of the right-sided cortical diffusion lesion and blurred cortex outline due to motion. Three-gradient direction DWI had acquisition time 2 min and 7 s and 20-gradient direction DWI had 4 min and 39 s, both were standard vendor protocols.

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