# ShuffleUNet: Super resolution of diffusion-weighted MRIs using deep learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.12898 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12898/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 21 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Feb 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-Level Performance on ImageNet Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.01852/) (2015)
- [Enhanced Deep Residual Networks for Single Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02921/) (2017)
- [3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06650/) (2016)
- [Deep Multi-scale Convolutional Neural Network for Dynamic Scene Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.02177/) (2016)
- [TorchIO: A Python library for efficient loading, preprocessing, augmentation and patch-based sampling of medical images in deep learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04696/) (2020)
- [Framing U-Net via Deep Convolutional Framelets: Application to Sparse-view CT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.08333/) (2017)
- [Checkerboard artifact free sub-pixel convolution: A note on sub-pixel convolution, resize convolution and convolution resize](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02937/) (2017)
- [Fine-tuning deep learning model parameters for improved super-resolution of dynamic MRI with prior-knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02711/) (2021)
- [Advanced Super-Resolution using Lossless Pooling Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06023/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Spatio-Angular Convolutions for Super-resolution in Diffusion MRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00854/) (2023)
- [Weakly-supervised segmentation using inherently-explainable classification models and their application to brain tumour classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.05148/) (2022)
- [DDoS-UNet: Incorporating temporal information using Dynamic Dual-channel UNet for enhancing super-resolution of dynamic MRI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05355/) (2022)
- [SIINR: Structurally Informed Implicit Neural Representations for super-resolution with uncertainty quantification of clinical quality diffusion MRI datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.19943/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) can be used to characterise the microstructure of the nervous tissue, e.g. to delineate brain white matter connections in a non-invasive manner via fibre tracking. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in high spatial resolution would play an important role in visualising such fibre tracts in a superior manner. However, obtaining an image of such resolution comes at the expense of longer scan time. Longer scan time can be associated with the increase of motion artefacts, due to the patient's psychological and physical conditions. Single Image Super-Resolution (SISR), a technique aimed to obtain high-resolution (HR) details from one single low-resolution (LR) input image, achieved with Deep Learning, is the focus of this study. Compared to interpolation techniques or sparse-coding algorithms, deep learning extracts prior knowledge from big datasets and produces superior MRI images from the low-resolution counterparts. In this research, a deep learning based super-resolution technique is proposed and has been applied for DW-MRI. Images from the IXI dataset have been used as the ground-truth and were artificially downsampled to simulate the low-resolution images. The proposed method has shown statistically significant improvement over the baselines and achieved an SSIM of 0.913±0.045.