RT info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis
T1 Contributions to Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Simulation: A Model for Dynamic Simulation and a Web Interface for Pulse Sequence Development and Visualization
A1 Villacorta Aylagas, Pablo
A2 Universidad de Valladolid. Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación
K1 Magnetic Resonance Imaging
K1 Simulation
K1 Motion
K1 Web Application
K1 Pulse Sequence
AB Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) simulation is of particular interest due to its ability to recreatea technique that, despite being extremely suitable for many clinical situations, is expensive and noteasily accessible to researchers and trainees. Over the last few years, numerous MRI simulators haveemerged, both open-source and proprietary. Among them, KomaMRI stands out as the only opensourcetool compatible with all Operating Systems, which includes a graphical user interface (GUI)and vendor-agnostic GPU support. Additionally, it is compatible with widely-used MRI communitystandards and is written in Julia, which enables efficient and extensible code.In this context, two key areas have been identified for improving the usability and versatility ofthe simulator. First, the functionality for defining and simulating dynamic phantoms presents roomfor improvement, as it only allows motion to be described using analytical expressions. Second, ina previous Bachelor’s Thesis [1], a desktop application for designing MRI sequences was developed.This application also shows potential for improvement, and its conversion to a web application wasproposed as a future line of work.This Master’s Thesis thus addresses the dual objective of defining a novel dynamic phantom modelwithin the KomaMRI simulator and creating an enhanced web-based application for the editing andsimulation of pulse sequences.For the first objective, the data structure of the simulator has been extended to include informationabout the motion of the phantom. To achieve this, the global motion of the model has been definedas a list of independent motions, which allows specifying the type, temporal behaviour, and affectedspins for each of them. Additionally, simulation functions have been modified to incorporate thecalculation of model displacements, and the KomaMRI visualization tool has been improved to allowfor the temporal representation of dynamic phantoms. Finally, a new file format has been defined tofacilitate the storage and sharing of these digital phantoms. All of this has been developed using theJulia programming language.For the second objective, a full-stack development has been carried out, addressing both the frontendand the back-end, as well as the communication mechanisms between them. Specifically, thefront-end includes an improved version of the previously developed sequence editor, a 3D visualizationtool for the selected slice, and two additional panels: one for visualizing the temporal sequence diagramand the other for displaying simulation results. This implementation combines the Qt framework withweb technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and WebAssembly. The back-end, developed in Julia,includes an HTTP server with a REST API, the MRI simulator, and additional modules including thedatabase and front-end files.Experiments conducted with the dynamic phantom demonstrate the ease of defining and simulatingdynamic anatomical models, while also offering reduced simulation times. Furthermore, the obtainedresults show a high degree of realism, both in demonstrative experiments and those which compare theenhanced version of KomaMRI with other contributions in the field of dynamic MRI simulation. Asfor the web-based sequence editor evaluation, it highlights its usefulness, interactivity and smoothness,also demonstrating the ability to design and simulate arbitrarily complex pulse sequences without theneed for local installations.The contributions of this work can be summarized as the enhancement of an MRI simulator withimproved dynamic phantom simulation capabilities, the definition of a new file format for digitalphantoms, and the development of a freely accessible web application for designing and simulatingpulse sequences, which benefits both researchers and technical users.
YR 2025
FD 2025
LK https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/77414
UL https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/77414
LA eng
NO Departamento de Teoría de la Señal y Comunicaciones e Ingeniería Telemática
DS UVaDOC
RD 20-sep-2025