Magnetic resonance imaging system and magnetic resonance imaging method using excited sub-volumes in groups

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9964618-B2
Application number	US-201314059808-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 22, 2013
Priority date	Oct 23, 2012
Publication date	May 8, 2018
Grant date	May 8, 2018

Abstract

A method of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) includes applying radio frequency (RF) pulses including a plurality of frequency components and a selection gradient to a target to simultaneously excite a plurality of sub-volumes included in each of a plurality of groups, wherein neighboring sub-volumes of all sub-volumes constituting a volume of the target belong to different groups; acquiring magnetic resonance signals from the plurality of sub-volumes by performing 3D encoding on each of the excited sub-volumes; and reconstructing the acquired magnetic resonance signals into image data corresponding to each of the plurality of sub-volumes.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method, the MRI method comprising:
applying radio frequency (RF) pulses, each comprising a frequency component and each having a different phase, and a selection gradient to a target volume to simultaneously excite sub-volumes included in each group of groups constituting the target volume, wherein neighboring sub-volumes of all sub-volumes constituting the target volume belong to different groups;
acquiring magnetic resonance signals from the sub-volumes by performing 3D encoding on each of the excited sub-volumes; and
reconstructing the acquired magnetic resonance signals into image data corresponding to each of the sub-volumes using a parallel imaging algorithm that uses phase information of the RF pulses and channel information of multi-channel receiving coils used to acquire the magnetic resonance signals, the channel information comprising a sensitivity profile with respect to each coil included in the multi-channel receiving coils.

2. The MRI method of claim 1 , wherein the groups comprise a first group through an N-th group, where N is a natural number that is equal to or greater than two; and
the MRI method further comprises sequentially and iteratively assigning the sub-volumes to one of the first to N-th groups.

3. The MRI method of claim 1 , wherein the acquiring of the magnetic resonance signals from the sub-volumes by performing 3D encoding on each of the excited sub-volumes comprises applying a first encoding gradient with respect to a first direction and a second encoding gradient with respect to a second direction to each of the excited sub-volumes, where either the first direction or the second direction is the same as a direction in which the selection gradient is applied.

4. The MRI method of claim 1 , further comprising applying a read-out gradient to the target volume to read out magnetic resonance signals from the sub-volumes,
wherein the acquiring of the magnetic resonance signals from the sub-volumes comprises acquiring the read-out magnetic resonance signals from the sub-volumes using the multi-channel receiving coils.

5. The MRI method of claim 1 , further comprising combining the image data corresponding to each of the sub-volumes included in each group of the groups.

6. The MRI method of claim 1 , further comprising synthesizing the image data corresponding to each of the sub-volumes to generate a 3D volume image.

7. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method, the MRI method comprising:
applying a pulse sequence comprising pulses, each having a different phase, to a target volume to simultaneously excite sub-volumes included in a group of groups constituting the target volume, wherein neighboring sub-volumes of all sub-volumes constituting the target volume belong to different groups;
reconstructing image data from magnetic resonance signals corresponding to each sub-volume of sub-volumes included in the group using a parallel imaging algorithm that uses phase information of the pulses and channel information of multi-channel receiving coils used to acquire the magnetic resonance signals, the channel information comprising a sensitivity profile with respect to each coil included in the multi-channel receiving coils;
repeating the applying of the pulse sequence and the reconstructing of the image data for each group of the groups constituting the target volume until the reconstructing of the image data has been performed for all groups constituting the target volume; and
generating a 3D volume image by combining the image data corresponding to each of the sub-volumes included in each of the groups constituting the target volume after the reconstructing of the image data has been performed for all of the groups constituting the target volume.

8. The MRI method of claim 7 , wherein the groups comprise a first group through an N-th group, where N is a natural number that is equal to or greater than two; and
the MRI method further comprises sequentially and iteratively assigning the sub-volumes to one of the first to N-th groups.

9. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform a method, the method comprising:
applying radio frequency (RF) pulses, each comprising a frequency component and each having a different phase, and a selection gradient to a target volume to simultaneously excite sub-volumes included in each group of groups constituting the target volume, wherein neighboring sub-volumes of all sub-volumes constituting the target volume belong to different groups;
acquiring magnetic resonance signals from the sub-volumes by performing 3D encoding on each of the excited sub-volumes; and
reconstructing the acquired magnetic resonance signals into image data corresponding to each of the sub-volumes using a parallel imaging algorithm that uses phase information of the RF pulses and channel information of multi-channel receiving coils used to acquire the magnetic resonance signals, the channel information comprising a sensitivity profile with respect to each coil included in the multi-channel receiving coils.

10. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform a method, the method comprising:
applying a pulse sequence comprising pulses, each having a different phase, to a target volume to simultaneously excite sub-volumes included in a group of groups constituting the target volume, wherein neighboring sub-volumes of all sub-volumes constituting the target volume belong to different groups;
reconstructing the image data from magnetic resonance signals corresponding to each sub-volume of sub-volumes included in the group using a parallel imaging algorithm that uses phase information of the pulses and channel information of multi-channel receiving coils used to acquire the magnetic resonance signals, the channel information comprising a sensitivity profile with respect to each coil included in the multi-channel receiving coils;
repeating the applying of the pulse sequence and the reconstructing of the image data for each group of the groups constituting the target volume until the reconstructing of the image data has been performed for all groups constituting the target volume; and
generating a 3D volume image by combining the image data corresponding to each of the sub-volumes included in each of the groups constituting the target volume after the reconstructing of the image data has been performed for all of the groups constituting the target volume.

11. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system comprising:
an MRI scanner configured to:
apply radio frequency (RF) pulses, each comprising a frequency component and each having a different phase, and a selection gradient to a target volume to simultaneously excite sub-volumes included in each group of groups constituting the target volume, wherein neighboring sub-volumes of all sub-volumes constituting the target volume belong to different groups; and
acquire magnetic resonance signals from the sub-volumes by performing 3D encoding on each of the excited sub-volumes; and
a data processor configured to reconstruct the acquired magnetic resonance signals into image data corresponding to each of the sub-volumes using a parallel imaging algorithm that uses phase information of the RF pulses and channel information of multi-channel receiving coils used to acquire the magnetic resonance signals, the channel information comprising a sensitivity profile with respect to each coil included in the multi-channel receiving coils.

12. The MRI system of claim 11 , wherein

Assignees

• Samsung Electronics Co Ltd

Inventors

• Kim Young Beom
• Ryu Yeunchul
• Son Jong-Bum
• Yi Jaemock
• Lee Seong-Deok

Classifications

• G01R33/543 Primary

  Control of the operation of the MR system, e.g. setting of acquisition parameters prior to or during MR data acquisition, dynamic shimming, use of one or more scout images for scan plane prescription (G01R33/546 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G01R33/4835 Primary

  of multiple slices · CPC title

• G01R33/5611

  Parallel magnetic resonance imaging, e.g. sensitivity encoding [SENSE], simultaneous acquisition of spatial harmonics [SMASH], unaliasing by Fourier encoding of the overlaps using the temporal dimension [UNFOLD], k-t-broad-use linear acquisition speed-up technique [k-t-BLAST], k-t-SENSE (structural details of arrays of sub-coils G01R33/3415) · CPC title