Magnetic resonance imaging method and apparatus

A magnetic resonance (MR) apparatus, comprising:

• an MR scanner;
• a control computer configured to operate said MR scanner, while a subject is situated therein, to scan the subject with a multi-echo MR data acquisition sequence, including exciting nuclear spins in the subject, with the excited nuclear spins producing N asymmetric magnetic resonance echo signals, wherein N is greater than or equal to 2, and including activating a readout gradient comprising a predispersion phase gradient, a first platform gradient, and a second platform gradient, with an area of said predispersion phase gradient being less than 1/N of an area of said first platform gradient, and an area of said first platform gradient being less than an area of the second platform gradient, and wherein said MR data are read out from N symmetric magnetic resonance echo signals;
• said control computer being configured to operate said MR scanner to read out raw data from the subject during said N asymmetric magnetic resonance echo signals, and to enter the raw data into an electronic memory as k-space data;
• and
• a processor configured to access said k-space data and to reconstruct a magnetic resonance image of the subject from said k-space data, and to make the magnetic resonance image available at an output of the computer in electronic form as a datafile.