Phase Unwrapping in Magnetic Resonance Elastography

Phase Unwrapping (PU) is an ill-posed problem inMagnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE). The phase information is not usableuntil the phases are retrieved by using PU algorithms. In this present study,we attempt to determine the ideal PU method for MRE using both phantom andvolunteer psoas major (PM) muscle images. All the MRE experiments were carriedout in Philips MRI (Achieva 3.0 T, Best, The Netherlands). A multi-echogradient-echo MRE pulse sequence was employed and the four PU methods wereconsidered based on their easy user platform. They are namely, MinimumDiscontinuity (MD), Laplacian-Based Estimate (LBE), Region Growing (RG) andDilate-Erode (DE) Propagate. Phantom images were successfully unwrapped by allfour methods, whereas MD and LBE could only unwrap PM muscle images properly.RG and DE failed to unwrap the PM muscle images.