Decoupled Algorithm for MRI Reconstruction Using Nonlocal Block Matching Model: BM3D-MRI

The block matching 3D (BM3D) is an efficient image model, which has found few applications other than its niche area of denoising. We will develop a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reconstruction algorithm, which uses decoupled iterations alternating over a denoising step realized by the BM3D algorithm and a reconstruction step through an optimization formulation. The decoupling of the two steps allows the adoption of a strategy with a varying regularization parameter, which contributes to the reconstruction performance. This new iterative algorithm efficiently harnesses the power of the nonlocal, image-dependent BM3D model. The MRI reconstruction performance of the proposed algorithm is superior to state-of-the-art algorithms from the literature. A convergence analysis of the algorithm is also presented.