Shaping spatial response functions for optimal estimation of compartmental signals from limited fourier data

The goal of quantitative MRI experiments is often to generate summary statistics regarding the behavior of the image within given regions of interest. In this work, we show that it is possible to generate better estimates for compartmental signals without requiring an initial image reconstruction step. The proposed approach is optimal in that it minimizes the worst case mean-squared error for the class of linear estimators and for a set of signals satisfying known magnitude constraints. In addition, it conveniently results in a criterion by which different experimental parameters can be compared. The extension of this region of interest quantification to image reconstruction is straightforward, as image reconstruction can be thought of as a graphical tiling of region of interest estimates of the signal.