Grant: Project Grant

Susceptibility weighted imaging is an magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan widely used in routine brain exams. The scan combines magnitude (which corresponds to the brightness of a lighthouse beam) and phase (which corresponds to the beam's direction) information for improved image contrast. On clinical scanners, the phase has to be filtered so it can be used for SWI, and the original phase is deleted. Due to the filtering, these filtered phase images cannot be used as input into quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM), a more recent method that allows the quantification of tissue damage. Such maps of susceptibility promise to measure brain iron, myelin content and venous blood oxygenation. The goal of this project is to make these phase images accessible to quantitative susceptibility mapping. With our approach, researchers and clinicians will be able to compute QSM on millions of existing and future clinical scans where no original phase data are available.