MRI inter-packet movement correction for images acquired with non-complementary data

Movement during the acquisition of magnetic resonance images can cause artifacts that interfere with subsequent image analysis. In this paper we address the problem of inter-packet motion and provide a method to minimize errors associated with this artifact. The procedure is based on an iterative packet-to-volume registration process and does not require complementary information such as multimodal acquisitions or protocols that provide redundant volume data. A Kaiser-Bessel function is used to interpolate missing data. Experiments with simulated data demonstrate that the packet-to-volume registration improves greatly after a single iteration and maintains improvement for the following iterations, while experiments with real data demonstrate a substantial reduction in associated artifacts and improvement in quality. In both cases anatomical integrity is preserved after reconstruction.