Thick slice interpolation using reverse anisotropic diffusion to reduce partial volume effect

We are investigating methods to reduce partial volume effect (PVE) in medical images acquired as a series of thick slices, in particular magnetic resonance imaging (MRl) of the human neck for atherosclerosis characterization. We extend the reverse diffusion algorithm to 3D and include a smoothing term to increase the robustness to noise. Evaluation on a synthetic data set showed a sharp reduction of PVE even in the presence of significant noise. Interpolation of actual patient MRI shows marked reduction of PVE