Spatio-Temporal dMRI Acquisition Design: Reducing the Number of $q\tau$ Samples Through a Relaxed Probabilistic Model

Acquisition time is a major limitation in recovering brain white matter microstructure with diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Finding a sampling scheme that maximizes signal quality and satisfies given time constraints is NP-hard. We alleviate that by introducing a relaxed probabilistic model of the problem, for which sub-optimal solutions can be found effectively. Our model is defined in the $q\tau$ space, so that it captures both spacial and temporal phenomena. The experiments on synthetic data and in-vivo diffusion images of the C57Bl6 wild-type mice reveal superiority of our technique over random sampling and even distribution in the $q\tau$ space.