Positive contrast MRI of prostate brachytherapy seeds by susceptibility mapping.

MRI can provide high-resolution images to assist physicians during intraoperative and post-operative phases of prostate brachytherapy. However, the brachytherapy seeds usually show as dark spots, i.e. negative contrast, on the MRI images. In this paper, we propose a new method to generate positive contrast seed images by mapping their susceptibility. The method is based on an improved kernel deconvolution algorithm using l1 regularization. Simulation results show the positive contrast seeds can be identified and differentiated using the proposed method.