Complex Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for MR Image Reconstruction

Undersampling the k-space data is widely adopted for acceleration of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Current deep learning based approaches for supervised learning of MRI image reconstruction employ real-valued operations and representations by treating complex valued k-space/spatial-space as real values. In this paper, we propose complex dense fully convolutional neural network (mathbbCDFNet) for learning to de-alias the reconstruction artifacts within undersampled MRI images. We fashioned a densely-connected fully convolutional block tailored for complex-valued inputs by introducing dedicated layers such as complex convolution, batch normalization, non-linearities etc. mathbbCDFNet leverages the inherently complex-valued nature of input k-space and learns richer representations. We demonstrate improved perceptual quality and recovery of anatomical structures through mathbbCDFNet in contrast to its real-valued counterparts.