Method for Improved Phase Contrast MRI Resolution

This invention is a method to significantly improve the temporal or spatial resolution in a phase contrast MRI (PC-MRI) study. In general, conventional PC-MRI involves encoding the motion information of spins in the phase of the image. The velocity of the spin motion can be extracted by calculating the phase difference between two consecutive images acquired with two different bipolar encoding gradients. Two scans are required in order to reconstruct flow velocity data, resulting in an increase in image acquisition and reconstruction time by a factor of two compared to that of a standard anatomical image. As a means of reducing the PC-MRI scan time, the inventors propose a method of acquiring only a fraction of k-space data. The k-space is sampled using an under-sampled spiral or single projection, radial scheme. Subsequently, the two data sets in the PC-MRI are subtracted to extract the motion information from undersampled data without any aliasing artifacts. This method of partial-field of view acquisition and reconstruction of PC-MRI results in an increased temporal resolution, while maintaining high spatial resolution. The increase in image acquisition efficiency could be used to increase the spatial resolution while maintaining the temporal resolution.