Faster 3d vocal tract real-time MRI using constrained reconstruction

Real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rtMRI) is a valuable emerging tool for studying the dynamics of vocal production. Conventional 2D rtMRI typically images the midsagittal plane of the vocal tract, acquiring data from all the important articulators. Dynamic 3D MRI would be a major advance, as it would provide 3D visualization of the vocal tract shaping dynamics, especially for the modeling of complex vocal tract geometries, such as liquid and fricative consonants, which is not easily available from 2D rtMRI. In this paper, we present an approach to directly acquire data in 3D using a highly temporally-undersampled stack-of-spirals imaging sequence, and perform reconstruction using a partially separable model. We demonstrate visualization of vocal tract dynamics from midsagittal and coronal scan planes in the articulation of fricative consonants.