Knopp Tobias, Grosser Mirco
Institute for Biomedical Imaging, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany.
Section for Biomedical Imaging, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
Magn Reson Med. 2021 Sep;86(3):1633-1646. doi: 10.1002/mrm.28792. Epub 2021 Apr 4.
The aim of this work is to develop a high-performance, flexible, and easy-to-use MRI reconstruction framework using the scientific programming language Julia.
Julia is a modern, general purpose programming language with strong features in the area of signal/image processing and numerical computing. It has a high-level syntax but still generates efficient machine code that is usually as fast as comparable C/C++ applications. In addition to the language features itself, Julia has a sophisticated package management system that makes proper modularization of functionality across different packages feasible. Our developed MRI reconstruction framework MRIReco.jl can therefore reuse existing functionality from other Julia packages and concentrate on the MRI-related parts. This includes common imaging operators and support for MRI raw data formats.
MRIReco.jl is a simple to use framework with a high degree of accessibility. While providing a simple-to-use interface, many of its components can easily be extended and customized. The performance of MRIReco.jl is compared to the Berkeley Advanced Reconstruction Toolbox (BART) and we show that the Julia framework achieves comparable reconstruction speed as the popular C/C++ library.
Modern programming languages can bridge the gap between high performance and accessible implementations. MRIReco.jl leverages this fact and contributes a promising environment for future algorithmic development in MRI reconstruction.
本研究旨在使用科学编程语言Julia开发一个高性能、灵活且易于使用的磁共振成像（MRI）重建框架。
Julia是一种现代通用编程语言，在信号/图像处理和数值计算领域具有强大功能。它具有高级语法，但仍能生成高效的机器代码，其速度通常与类似的C/C++应用程序相当。除了语言本身的特性外，Julia还拥有一个完善的包管理系统，使得跨不同包对功能进行适当的模块化成为可能。因此，我们开发的MRI重建框架MRIReco.jl可以重用其他Julia包中的现有功能，并专注于与MRI相关的部分。这包括常见的成像算子以及对MRI原始数据格式的支持。
MRIReco.jl是一个易于使用且具有高度可访问性的框架。在提供易于使用的接口的同时，其许多组件都可以轻松扩展和定制。将MRIReco.jl的性能与伯克利高级重建工具箱（BART）进行了比较，结果表明，这个Julia框架实现了与流行的C/C++库相当的重建速度。
现代编程语言可以弥合高性能与易于实现之间的差距。MRIReco.jl利用了这一事实，并为未来MRI重建算法的开发提供了一个有前景的环境。
