RF Interference Manifested Zipper Detection And Removal Using Channel Compression

Zipper artifacts are commonly seen in MR images due to spurious radio-frequency signals or improper RF-shielding. Zipper-riddled images lose diagnostic value and are usually sent for rescan. Here, we attempt to mitigate zipper artifacts in the post-processing pipeline after scan has been acquired. We do this after channel combination technique has limited zipper appearance to 1-2 pseudo-channels, which we detect and remove from channel-combination process. We evaluated this on various brain contrasts and confirm reduction of zipper presence visually in the images. Given that zippers manifest as bright/dark discontinuous lines irrespective of the anatomy/contrast, the method should be generalizable.