Abstract
Ultra-low-field (ULF) MRI offers portable and accessible neuroimaging but suffers from reduced signal-to-noise ratio and limited spatial resolution compared to high-field (HF) systems. Acquiring paired ULF–HF data for supervised enhancement is often difficult, particularly in resource-limited settings. We introduce ULF-Synth, a framework that combines: (i) acquisition-based synthesis of realistic ULF images from HF volumes to create large-scale paired training data, (ii) a spatial-frequency domain objective that prioritizes recovery of high-frequency anatomical detail. This formulation is architecture-agnostic, consistently improving structural similarity and perceptual fidelity across encoder–decoder, adversarial, and diffusion-based translation models. When trained exclusively on synthetic data, the resulting models generalize effectively to real 64 mT ULF acquisitions, improving downstream multiclass brain segmentation and achieving higher radiologist preference and diagnostic acceptability in a blinded reader study. These findings demonstrate that synthetic paired supervision provides a practical and scalable pathway for enhancing ULF MRI without requiring real paired acquisitions. Code, Models & Dataset will be made available.
Links to Paper and Supplementary Materials
Main Paper (Open Access Version): https://papers.miccai.org/miccai-2026-sat/paper/AFRICAI_019.pdf
SharedIt Link: Not yet available
SpringerLink (DOI): Not yet available
Supplementary Material: Not Submitted
Link to Open Review
Open Review Page: https://openreview.net/forum?id=ebyw01oZpc
BibTex
@InProceedings{MusTou_ULFSynth_MICCAISAT2026,
author = { Musah, Toufiq AND Calcagno, Salvatore AND Salanitri, Federica Proietto AND Li, Xiaomeng AND Adewole, Maruf AND Elbatel, Marawan},
title = { { ULF-Synth: Physics-Guided Ultra-Low-Field MRI Enhancement for Pediatric Neuroimaging } },
booktitle = {Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention -- MICCAI 2026 Workshops and Challenges},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Springer Nature Switzerland},
volume = {LNCS 17264},
month = {pending},
page = {pending}
}