APPLICATION OF MATHEMATICAL OPTIMAL TRANSPORT THEORY TO OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS OF IMAGE ENHANCEMENT AND ARTIFACT REDUCTION IN MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING

THIS IS A PRE-SOLICITATION NON-COMPETITIVE (NOTICE OF INTENT) SYNOPSIS TO AWARD A CONTRACT WITHOUT PROVIDING FOR FULL OR OPEN COMPETITION (INCLUDING BRAND-NAME).

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Office of intends to award a sole source contract under the authority of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 13.106-1 (b) Soliciting from a single source. For purchases not exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold, contracting officers may solicit from one source if the contracting officer determines that the circumstances of the contract action deem only one source reasonably available. This contract will be awarded to University of Maryland College Park, 3112 Lee Building College Park, Maryland 20742-5100.

NORTH AMERICAN INDUSTRY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM (NAICS) CODE and SET ASIDE STATUS

The intended procurement is classified under NAICS code 541380 with a Size Standard of $19 Million.

REGULATORY AUTHORITY

This acquisition is conducted under the authority of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 13—Simplified Acquisition Procedures. Contracts awarded using FAR Part 13—Simplified Acquisition Procedures are exempt from the requirements of FAR Part 6—Competition Requirements. FAR Subpart 13.106-1 (b) Soliciting from a single source provides that: For purchases not exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold, Contracting officers may solicit from one source IF the contracting officer determines that the circumstances of the contract action deem only one source reasonably available (e.g., urgency, exclusive licensing agreements, brand-name OR industrial mobilization).

The resultant contract will include all applicable provisions and clauses in effect through the Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 2025-05 dated August 7, 2025.

DESCRIPTION OF REQUIREMENT

PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES:

Purchase Description: NIDA requires the Application of mathematical optimal transport theory to outstanding problems of image enhancement and artifact reduction in magnetic resonance imaging.

Specific Requirements:

1. Provide a detailed literature search to identify suitable modalities for the optimal transport approach, as well as those modalities for which further back-end (post-acquisition) processing will be most effective and provide the most additional information.  This will be in close collaboration with the PI, who is the domain-knowledge expert in MRI.
2. Establish the mathematical framework for the associated optimization problems using the Wasserstein-1 metric as follows:

i) for image inpainting

ii) for multimodality superresolution

iii) for localized artifact removal

1. Explore available nonlinear optimization methods to address the optimization problems described above and identify those that are most promising.
2. Translate the solutions of these optimization problems into MRI-image outcomes.  Develop suitable metrics (e.g. SSIM; PSNR) for quality, based on fiducial images. One approach for construction of the latter will be to deliberately degrade high-quality images, which will then serve as their own gold standard for comparison. 
3. Evaluate the efficacy of the Wasserstein-2 metric in comparison with the Wasserstein-1 metric in the program described above. 

Level Of Effort:

(0.5 x 2) graduate students, 50% effort for each of two students.

CONTRACTING WITHOUT PROVIDING FOR FULL OR OPEN COMPETITION

(INCLUDING BRAND-NAME) DETERMINATION

The determination by the Government to award a contract without providing for full and open competition is based upon the market research conducted. Specifically, University of Maryland, College Park, MD is the only source that can meet NIA’s needs for Application of mathematical optimal transport theory to outstanding problems of image enhancement and artifact reduction in magnetic resonance imaging.

This work represents an entirely new project. The new project under this contract specifically requires sophisticated methods in mathematical analysis, and in particular development and application of the optimal transport approach to MRI image artifact reduction, optimization, and superresolution. Applied mathematical optimal transport was in fact developed years ago primarily by this group, at the Norbert Wiener Center for Harmonic Analysis, Dept. of Mathematics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

Although this is an entirely new project, for other projects we have already developed methods in collaboration with the University of Maryland College Park Department of Mathematics over the past several years, resulting in several joint publications. Working further with this group will ensure that the entirely new methods which are the subject of this contract are consistent with our previous work. This is essential in order to perform proper comparison tests and to understand the improvements in the new methods as compared to the previous jointly-developed methods. In particular, it is critical to ensure that brain microstructural differences that we detect with MRI in new experimental subjects are indeed due to actual tissue changes, rather than due to differences in details of the analysis. As a result, and also because of their deep and unique expertise in the mathematical theory of optimal transport, the University of Maryland is the only source that can meet NIA’s needs.

The intended source is:

University of Maryland College Park

3112 Lee Building

College Park, Maryland 20742-5100

Closing Statement: THIS NOTICE IS NOT A REQUEST FOR COMPETITIVE PROPOSALS. However, interested parties may identify their interest and capability to respond to this notice.

A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. All responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation which shall be considered by the agency. The information received will normally be considered solely for the purposes of determining whether to proceed on a non-competitive basis or to conduct a competitive procurement.

Responses to this notice shall contain sufficient information to establish the interested parties' bona-fide capabilities for fulfilling the requirement and include: unit price, list price, shipping and handling costs, the delivery period after contract award, the prompt payment discount terms, the F.O.B. Point (Destination or Origin), the Unique Entity ID (UEI), the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), and the certification of business size. All offerors must have an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) www.sam.gov.

All responses must be received by the closing date and time of this announcement and must reference the solicitation number, 75N95025Q00225. Responses must be submitted electronically to Llakim Dubroff, Contract Specialist, at Llakim.Dubroff@nih.gov U.S. Mail and Fax responses will not be accepted.

Primary Point of Contact:

Llakim Dubroff, Contract Specialist