A patch-based spatiotemporal phase unwrapping method for phase contrast MRI using graph cuts

Phase unwrapping is an important and challenging problem in phase contrast magnetic resonance imaging (PC-MRI). In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for phase unwrapping based on graph cuts. Our algorithm takes a patch-based approach which has the advantages of simplicity and robustness to phase noise. To make use of temporal information from the neighboring frames as well as spatial information from the current frame, the energy function is designed to combine both spatial and temporal constraints. The proposed method has been tested with real PC-MRI data. Experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm is capable of unwrapping images with severe phase wrapping, and that it outperforms other existing popular phase unwrapping algorithms both qualitatively and quantitatively.