Combining Phase Measurements from Multiple MRI Channels

This technology is the combination of multiple measurements obtained from different receive coils (channels) of an MR system to provide improved signal (SNR) via the improved sensitivity profile. The invention consists of an optimizer which determines the values of the echo time steps and the parameters of the post-processing algorithm. This optimizer need only to be run once, offline prior to subsequent further acquisition.

Background:

Magnetic Resonance with multi-channel phase reconstruction presents a difficult challenge because different channels have arbitrary phase offsets. The phase offset is spatially varying making combining complex data from multiple channels difficult to perform accurately. In MRI, there are multiple coils (channels) that acquire phase around the organ of interest, for better coverage. The issue is, each of these channels have their own phase, and are out of phase from one another. That is, each channel measures a phase that is offset from the other channel's phase. And to make it worse, this phase offset changes across the image, so calibration is practically out of the question.

Application:

• Can be incorporated into the acquisition methods of most commercial MRI scanners
• The product could one day be developed on an existing commercial MRI machine and sold as a software upgrade to institutions owning the MRI machine
• Can be part of a user agreement with a MRI manufacturer

Advantages:

• Reducing echo time sampling is not required to increase the phase dynamic range
• Using large echo time sampling is no longer limited by wrapping artifacts
• No spatial regularization or phase unwrapping are needed