Progressive Sub-band Residual-Learning Network for MR Image Super Resolution.

High-resolution (HR) magnetic resonance images (MRI) provide more detailed information for clinical application. However, HR MRI is less available because of the longer scan time and lower signal-to-noise ratio. Spatial resolution is one of the key parameters of MRI. The image post-processing technique super-resolution (SR) is an alternative approach to improve the spatial resolution of MR images. Inspired by advanced deep learning based SR methods, we propose an MRI SR model named progressive sub-band residual learning SR network (PSR-SRN). The proposed model contains two parallel progressive learning streams, where one stream learns on missed high-frequency residuals by sub-band residual learning unit (ISRL) and the other focuses on reconstructing refined MR image. These two streams complement each other and enable to learn complex mappings between “Low-” and “High-” resolution MR images. Besides, we introduce brain-like mechanisms (in-depth supervision and local feedback mechanism) and progressive sub-band learning strategy to emphasize variant textures of MRI. Compared with traditional and deep learning MRI SR methods, our PSR-SRN model shows superior performance.