An optimal dimensionality sampling scheme on the sphere with accurate and efficient spherical harmonic transform for diffusion MRI

We design a sampling scheme on the sphere and a corresponding spherical harmonic transform (SHT) for the measurement and reconstruction of the diffusion signal in diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI). By exploiting the antipodal symmetry property of the diffusion signal in the spectral (spherical harmonic) domain, we design a sampling scheme that attains the optimal number of samples, equal to the degrees of freedom required to represent the antipodally symmetric band-limited diffusion signal in the spectral domain. Compared with other sampling schemes that can be used with the optimal number of samples, we demonstrate, through numerical experiments, that the proposed scheme enables more accurate computation of the SHT, and this accuracy is practically rotationally invariant. In addition, it results in more efficient computation of the SHT and storage of the diffusion signal.