Application

An efficient and versatile numerical MRI simulator with GPU parallel acceleration

Contributors

Fang Liu1, Julia V. Velikina2, Walter F. Block2, Richard Kijowski1, Alexey A. Samsonov1

Estimated cost

Free

Progress

BSD 2-Clause License

Stable Release v1.3

MRiLab is a numerical MRI simulation software. It has been developed and optimized to simulate MR signal formation, k-space acquisition and MR image reconstruction. MRiLab provides several dedicated toolboxes to analyze RF pulse, design MR sequence, configure multiple transmitting and receiving coils, investigate magnetic field related properties and evaluate real-time imaging techniques.

The main MRiLab simulation platform combined with those toolboxes can be applied to customize various virtual MR experiments which can serve as a prior stage for prototyping and testing new MR technique and application. MRiLab features a highly interactive graphical user interface (GUI) for the convenience of fast experimental design and technique prototyping.

High simulation accuracy is achieved by simulating discrete spin evolution at small time interval using the Bloch-equation and appropriate tissue models. In order to manipulate large multidimensional spin arrays, MRiLab employs parallel computing by incorporating latest graphical processing unit (GPU) techniques and multi-threading CPU techniques. With efficient parallelization, MRiLab can accomplish multidimensional multiple spin species MR simulations at high simulation accuracy and time efficiency, and with low computing hardware cost.

Publications

Affiliations

1Department of Radiology, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Madison, WI, USA

2Department of Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Madison, WI, USA

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