Bloch Equation Simulator (C++ implementation)

Efficient and fast implementation of Bloch equation simulator for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences, supporting parallel transmission (pTx).

Dependencies:

• Git (http://git-scm.com/)
• Cmake build tool (http://www.cmake.org/)
• Parallelization is implemented based on STL algorithms. Using a compiler with c++17 support is required.

Linux installation:

Installing dependencies:

sudo apt-get install g++ cmake git libtbb-dev

Clone bloch simulator from repository:

git clone https://github.com/aghaeifar/bloch_simulator.git

Build and install Bloch simulator as a shared library:

$ cd bloch_simulator
$ cmake -B ./build
$ cmake --build ./build --config Release
$ sudo make install

Windows installation:

The cmake as stated above should also work in Windows. It will create a Visual Studio sln file. Open and build solution in release mode.

Precompiled binaries

Shared library built for Linux and Windows can be downloaded in the repository releases. All the tests and builds are done with Windows 10 & Visual Studio 2022, Ubuntu 22.04 & gcc 11.2.0, and MATLAB 2022a.

Macros:

One can define following macros to disable/enable some features in the program:

• __SEQUENTIAL__ disables parallelization and run in sequential mode.
• __SINGLE_PRECISION__ uses single precision floating-point format. Boost the speed at the cost of precision. All double inputs must be replaced with float.
• __EXPORT_CLASS_BLOCH__ creates exports when building a shared library in Windows.

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Short manual:

MATLAB Interface:

A MATLAB mex wrapper is provided in MATLAB folder with a few examples. Cmake should be able prepare mex file build too. Run build.m in MATLAB folder for a static mex build.

Troubleshooting

Getting this error when running mex file:

/sys/os/glnxa64/libstdc++.so.6: version CXXABI_1.3.8' not found

Solution: update softlink as:

sudo ln -vfns /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.30 libstdc++.so.6

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Contributing:

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.