New approach for data acquisition and image reconstruction in parallel magnetic resonance imaging

In this study, we propose a novel data acquisition and image reconstruction method for parallel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The proposed method improves the GRAPPA algorithm by simultaneously collecting data using the body coil in addition to localized surface coils. The body coil data is included in the GRAPPA reconstruction as an additional coil. The reconstructed body coil image shows greater uniformity over the field of view than the conventional sum-of-squares (SoS) reconstruction that is conventionally used with GRAPPA. The body coil image can also be used to correct for spatial inhomogeneity in the SoS image. The algorithm has been tested using numerical and real MRI phantom data.