Method for simultaneous multi-slice magnetic resonance imaging

A method for producing a plurality of images of a subject with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, the steps of the method comprising:

• a) applying, with the MRI system, a radio frequency (RF) excitation field to a portion of a subject that includes a plurality of slice locations, the plurality of slice locations including a current slice location and at least one adjacent slice location;
• b) establishing, with the MRI system, at least one readout magnetic field gradient along a frequency-encoding direction following the application of the RF excitation field in order to form echo signals;
• c) sequentially producing a plurality of slice-encoding magnetic field gradient blips along a slice-encoding direction while the at least one readout magnetic field gradient is established in order to impart a phase shift to the formed echo signals such that image data corresponding to the at least one adjacent slice location is shifted by a selected percentage of a field-of-view (FOV) of the current slice location;
• d) acquiring, with an array of RF receiver coils that forms a part of the MRI system, image data indicative of the formed echo signals;
• and
• e) reconstructing a plurality of images of the subject from the acquired image data, each of the plurality of images depicting the subject at a corresponding one of the plurality of slice locations.