Real-time automated quality control for quantitative MRI

This work presents an automated quality control (QC) system within quantitative MRI (qMRI) workflows. By leveraging the ISMRM/NIST quantitative MRI system phantom, we establish an open-source pipeline for rapid, repeatable, and accurate validation and stability tracking of sequence quantification performance across diverse clinical settings.

A microservice-based QC system for automated vial segmentation from quantitative maps was developed and tested across various MRF acquisition and protocol designs, with reports generated and returned to the scanner in real time.

The system demonstrated consistent and repeatable value segmentation and reporting, successfully extracted all 252 T1 and T2 vial samples tested. Values extracted from the same sequence were found to be repeatable with 0.09% ± 1.23% and – 0.26% ± 2.68% intersession error, respectively.

By providing real-time quantification performance assessment, this easily deployable automated QC approach streamlines sequence validation and long-term performance monitoring, vital for the broader acceptance of qMRI as a standard component of clinical protocols.