Generalized Implicit Neural Representation for Efficient MRI Parallel Imaging Reconstruction

High-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is essential in clinical diagnosis. However, its long acquisition time remains a critical issue. Parallel imaging (PI) is a common approach to reduce acquisition time by periodically skipping specific k-space lines and reconstructing images from undersampled data. This study presents a generalized implicit neural representation (INR)-based framework for MRI PI reconstruction, addressing limitations commonly encountered in conventional methods, such as subject-specific or undersampling scale-specific requirements and long reconstruction time. The proposed method overcomes these limitations by leveraging prior knowledge of voxel-specific features and integrating a novel scale-embedded encoder module. This encoder generates scale-independent voxel-specific features from undersampled images, enabling robust reconstruction across various undersampling scales without requiring retraining for each specific scale or subject. The framework's INR model treats fully sampled MR images as a continuous function of spatial coordinates and prior voxel-specific features, efficiently reconstructing high-quality MR images from undersampled data. Extensive experiments on publicly available MRI datasets demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method in reconstructing images at multiple acceleration factors (4x, 5x, and 6x), achieving higher evaluation metrics and visual fidelity compared to state-of-the-art methods. In terms of efficiency, this INR-based approach exhibits notable advantages, including reduced floating point operations and GPU usage, allowing for accelerated processing times while maintaining high reconstruction quality. The generalized design of the model significantly reduces computational resources and time consumption, making it more suitable for real-time clinical applications.