Correcting residual aliasing in accelerated magnetic resonance imaging

A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus comprising:

• static and gradient magnetic field generators and a plurality of radio frequency (RF) coils disposed within said magnetic field generators, the RF coils having respectively associated known RF signal reception sensitivity fields;
• RF transmitter and RF receiver circuits coupled to said RF coils;
• and
• an MRI sequence controller including a k-space memory and at least one processor configured to control said magnetic field generators and said RF transmitter and receiver circuits to:
• reconstruct MRI image domain data from k-space MRI data acquired from said RF coils, MR signal contributions from one slice having been de-multiplexed from a plurality of multiplexed slices or aliased locations in reconstructed image domain MRI data;
• form, in a digital memory connected to the at least one processor, a linear transformation representing said MR signal contributions from each multiplexed slice or aliased location into other slices or locations;
• invert the linear transformation formed in the digital memory;
• generate, using the at least one processor, one or more improved SENSE reconstructed images of respective ones of said plurality of slices or locations having reduced MR signal contributions between slices or locations by a composition of the one or more SENSE reconstructed MRI images and the inverted linear transformation;
• and
• output the generated one or more improved reconstructed images to a display or digital storage.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored therein instructions that, when executed by a computer processor having access to memory and said stored instructions, causes the computer to perform a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) image domain operations for processing MRI images reconstructed from k-space MRI data acquired from multiple magnetic resonance (MR) radio frequency (RF) signal receiving coils having respectively associated known RF signal reception sensitivity fields, MR signal contributions from one slice having been de-multiplexed from a plurality of multiplexed slices or aliased locations in reconstructed image domain MRI data to be processed, wherein the operations include:

• forming, in a digital memory connected to at least one processor, a linear transformation representing said MR signal contributions from each multiplexed slice or aliased location into other slices or locations;
• inverting the linear transformation formed in the digital memory;
• generating, using the at least one processor, one or more improved SENSE reconstructed images of respective ones of said plurality of slices or locations having reduced MR signal contributions between slices or locations by a composition of the one or more SENSE reconstructed MRI images and the inverted linear transformation;
• and
• outputting the generated one or more improved reconstructed images to a display or digital storage.