Parallel Computing of Patch-Based Nonlocal Operator and Its Application in Compressed Sensing MRI

Magnetic resonance imaging has been benefited from compressed sensing in improving imaging speed. But the computation time of compressed sensing magnetic resonance imaging (CS-MRI) is relatively long due to its iterative reconstruction process. Recently, a patch-based nonlocal operator (PANO) has been applied in CS-MRI to significantly reduce the reconstruction error by making use of self-similarity in images. But the two major steps in PANO, learning similarities and performing 3D wavelet transform, require extensive computations. In this paper, a parallel architecture based on multicore processors is proposed to accelerate computations of PANO. Simulation results demonstrate that the acceleration factor approaches the number of CPU cores and overall PANO-based CS-MRI reconstruction can be accomplished in several seconds.