Construction of a Paired MRI Brain Imaging Dataset Across Field Strengths

This study aimed to construct a paired low-field and high-field healthy-brain MRI dataset to provide a valuable resource for low-field MRI super-resolution(SR) research.

Postgraduate students enrolled at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications from January to March 2026 were recruited and underwent brain MRI scans on both a 0.2 T low-field scanner and a 3.0 T high-field scanner. The low-field protocol comprised three axial sequences—fluid-attenuated inversion recovery(FLAIR), fast spin echo(FSE), and multi-spin-echo(MSSE). The high-field protocol included a magnetization-prepared rapid gradient echo(MPRAGE) sequence with isotropic resolution, as well as diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). Post-acquisition processing included format conversion, orientation unification, bias-field correction, intensity normalization, automated brain parcellation, and SynthSR-hyperfine SR reconstruction using paired 0.2T MSSE/FSE inputs.

After quality control and selection, a total of 76 imaging volumes were obtained, including complete 0.2 T/3.0 T paired data for 10 subjects and 0.2 T-only data for 2 additional subjects. Thirty-two label brain parcellations were successfully generated for all 10 paired subjects. SR volumes generated from MSSE/FSE pairs showed a certain level of improvement in image quality. Across the 10 paired subjects, mean metrics were as follows: SNR 168.470±60.329, CNR 1.729±0.087.

This dataset provides a multi-sequence paired brain MRI resource at 0.2 T and 3.0 T. It can serve as a benchmark for training and evaluating low-field MRI super-resolution models and for cross-field-strength image quality studies.