Overview
NIMARC-MRI is the first public abdominal MRI dataset from West Africa, collected at a Nigerian tertiary centre operating a 1.5 T Siemens Magnetom Essenza scanner without integrated motion-correction licenses. The dataset was created to benchmark vendor-neutral, image-domain deep learning for respiratory motion correction in resource-constrained settings.
Cohort Composition
The dataset comprises three mutually exclusive patient cohorts:
Table
Cohort
Description
Patients
Files
Format
Synthetic
3D-consistent synthetic respiratory motion for supervised training
139
139
.npz (train/val/test split)
Real Motion
Native motion-degraded HASTE for clinical validation
25
25
.npz
Paired HASTE-TRIGGER
Paired acquisitions for cross-sequence generalisation
79
158
.npz (79 HASTE + 79 TRIGGER)
Total
243
322
Note: Patient IDs are non-identifiable codes. No individual appears in more than one cohort.
Directory Structure
plain
nimarc-mri-v1.0/
├── README.md
├── LICENSE.txt
├── DATA_USE_AGREEMENT.pdf
├── Synthetic/
│ ├── train/
│ │ ├── ORIGINAL_pt001_synthetic.npz
│ │ ├── ORIGINAL_pt002_synthetic.npz
│ │ └── ... (100 patients)
│ ├── val/
│ │ ├── ORIGINAL_pt101_synthetic.npz
│ │ └── ... (20 patients)
│ └── test/
│ ├── ORIGINAL_pt121_synthetic.npz
│ └── ... (19 patients)
├── real_motion_25/
│ ├── motion_metadata.csv
│ ├── MOTION_pt001_haste.npz
│ ├── MOTION_pt002_haste.npz
│ └── ... (25 patients)
└── Paired_79/
├── paired_metadata.csv
├── PAIRED_pt001_haste.npz
├── PAIRED_pt001_trigger.npz
├── PAIRED_pt002_haste.npz
├── PAIRED_pt002_trigger.npz
└── ... (79 patients x 2 sequences)
File Naming Convention
Table
Cohort
Pattern
Example
Synthetic (train/val/test)
ORIGINAL_pt{001}_synthetic.npz
ORIGINAL_pt131_synthetic.npz
Real Motion
MOTION_pt{002}_haste.npz
MOTION_pt025_haste.npz
Paired HASTE
PAIRED_pt{003}_haste.npz
PAIRED_pt079_haste.npz
Paired TRIGGER
PAIRED_pt{004}_trigger.npz
PAIRED_pt079_trigger.npz
Data Format
All imaging data are stored as NumPy .npz archives with the following keys:
data — the imaging volume (slices x height x width)
affine — the NIfTI affine matrix for spatial orientation
header — acquisition parameters extracted from DICOM
Volumes were converted from DICOM via dcm2niix (v6.0.0), resampled to isotropic 1.0 mm, intensity-normalised to [0, 1] via min-max scaling with 3.5 SD outlier clipping, and serialised as .npz.
Acquisition Parameters
Table
Parameter
T2 HASTE (Synthetic & Real Motion)
T2 TSE-TRIGGER (Paired)
Scanner
Siemens Magnetom Essenza 1.5 T
Siemens Magnetom Essenza 1.5 T
Sequence
Single-shot turbo spin-echo, axial
Multi-shot respiratory-triggered TSE, axial
TR (ms)
4,574 ± 890
3,500–5,500
TE (ms)
80–150
85–120
Echo train length
77–96
12–26 (mean 19)
Slice thickness (mm)
2.5–8.5
4.0–6.0
Matrix
256 × 256
256 × 256
Fat suppression
SPAIR / None
SPAIR
Breathing
Breath-hold (single-shot)
Free-breathing, belt triggering
Acquisition time
~18–22 s per slab
~3–5 min per slab
Metadata Files
motion_metadata.csv (real_motion_25/)
Table
Column
Description
patient_id
Non-identifiable code (e.g., MOTION_pt025)
file_name
Corresponding .npz file
tr_ms
Repetition time
te_ms
Echo time
slice_thickness_mm
Slice thickness
motion_severity
Mild / Moderate / Severe (radiologist-assessed)
likert_original
Blinded Likert score (original)
likert_corrected
Blinded Likert score (model-corrected)
notes
Additional observations
paired_metadata.csv (Paired_79/)
Table
Column
Description
patient_id
Non-identifiable code (e.g., PAIRED_pt079)
haste_file
HASTE .npz filename
trigger_file
TRIGGER .npz filename
tr_haste_ms
HASTE TR
te_haste_ms
HASTE TE
tr_trigger_ms
TRIGGER TR
te_trigger_ms
TRIGGER TE
slice_thickness_haste_mm
HASTE slice thickness
slice_thickness_trigger_mm
TRIGGER slice thickness
acquisition_date
Date of scan (YYYY-MM-DD)
Demographics
Age and sex metadata were removed during institutional DICOM anonymisation per National Health Research Ethics Committee requirements (NHREC/17/03/2018: SHREC/2026/7923). The released dataset contains imaging data and acquisition parameters only.
Data Use Agreement
Full patient-level data are available under a Controlled Data Use Agreement requiring:
Citation of the accompanying paper.
Institutional ethics clearance or IRB approval for the proposed research.
No attempt to re-identify patients.
Non-commercial use (CC-BY-NC 4.0).
To request access to the full dataset, send email it to abdulrazaq.zubair@fuhsa.edu.ng, aazubair01@gmail.com, +2348189817182 whatsapp
Sample Subset
A 10-patient sample subset is available for immediate download:
5 synthetic (2 train, 1 val, 2 test)
3 real motion
2 paired (4 files: 2 HASTE + 2 TRIGGER)
See sample_subset/ for details.
Citation
If you use this dataset, please cite:
bibtex
{nimarc2026,
title={NIMARC-MRI: Abdominal HASTE Dataset and a Baseline U-Net Exposing the Synthetic-to-Real Gap in Low-Resource Motion Correction},
author={Zubair, Abdulrazaq A. and Muhammad, Nafiu Musa and Krah, Simeon and Ibrahim, Ummasalma Usman and Abdumumin, Yusuf Tijjani and Tijjani, Ismail Ismail and Ibrahim, Ummulkhairi and Anas, Alyasaa and Yakubu, Mubaraq and Muhammad, Abbas Rabiu},
{MIRASOL Workshop, MICCAI},
year={2026}
}
Contact
For questions regarding the dataset or DUA, contact:Abdulrazaq A. Zubair — abdulrazaq.zubair@fuhsa.edu.ng, aazubair01@gmail.com, +2348189817182
Acknowledgements
This work was conducted at Medserve Kano Diagnostic Center, we also acknowledge African Institute for Research Advancement & Innovation (AIRA Africa) and SPARK academy for their tremendous support.