MoG-QSM: Model-based Generative Adversarial Deep Learning Network for Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping

Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) estimates the underlying tissue magnetic susceptibility from the MRI gradient-echo phase signal and has demonstrated great potential in quantifying tissue susceptibility in various brain diseases. However, the intrinsic ill-posed inverse problem relating the tissue phase to the underlying susceptibility distribution affects the accuracy for quantifying tissue susceptibility. The resulting susceptibility map is known to suffer from noise amplification and streaking artifacts. To address these challenges, we propose a model-based framework that permeates benefits from generative adversarial networks to train a regularization term that contains prior information to constrain the solution of the inverse problem, referred to as MoG-QSM. A residual network leveraging a mixture of least-squares (LS) GAN and the L1 cost was trained as the generator to learn the prior information in susceptibility maps. A multilayer convolutional neural network was jointly trained to discriminate the quality of output images. MoG-QSM generates highly accurate susceptibility maps from single orientation phase maps. Quantitative evaluation parameters were compared with recently developed deep learning QSM methods and the results showed MoG-QSM achieves the best performance. Furthermore, a higher intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was obtained from MoG-QSM maps of the traveling subjects, demonstrating its potential for future applications, such as large cohorts of multi-center studies. MoG-QSM is also helpful for reliable longitudinal measurement of susceptibility time courses, enabling more precise monitoring for metal ion accumulation in neurodegenerative disorders.