Synopsis

Keywords: Image acquisition: Reconstruction, Image acquisition: Fast imaging, Physics & Engineering: Hardware

This talk will review the use of radiofrequency (RF) coils for spatial encoding in MRI. RF coils have spatially varying sensitivities to MR signal. As a result, combining information from multiple coils allows spatial discrimination of regions not explicitly separated by magnetic field gradients; or, alternatively, it allows missing data not explicitly encoded with gradients to be filled in. The talk will introduce SMASH, SENSE and GRAPPA parallel imaging approaches as distinct but related fitting problems. It will then place parallel imaging in the broader context of inverse problems to be introduced in subsequent lectures.