Method and apparatus for reconstruction of magnetic resonance images with incomplete sampling

A magnetic resonance (MR) apparatus comprising:

• an MR data acquisition scanner comprising a plurality of receiving antennae;
• a control computer configured to operate the data acquisition scanner to acquire MR data with a plurality of receiving antennae of the data acquisition scanner and entering the acquired MR data into a memory organized as k-space comprising a plurality of k-space points, with the acquired MR data being entered into k-space at respective positions of particular k-space points with a number of said particular k-space points being smaller than a number of all k-space points belonging to the imaging sequence;
• each of the receiving antennae having an aperture that causes data to be acquired at a respective k-space point, with a spectral main lobe of each receiving antenna also extending over k-space points that are adjacent to the respective k-space point;
• and
• an image reconstruction computer configured to reconstruct all image points that correspond to all of said k-space points, using respective sensitivity profiles of the receiving antennae to thereby take account of data from k-space points at positions at which no MR data were acquired.

A non-transitory, computer-readable data storage medium encoded with programming instructions, said storage medium being loaded into a computer system of a magnetic resonance (MR) apparatus comprising an MR data acquisition scanner having a plurality of receiving antennae, said programming instructions causing said computer system to:

• operate the data acquisition scanner to acquire MR data with a plurality of receiving antennae of the data acquisition scanner and entering the acquired MR data into a memory organized as k-space comprising a plurality of k-space points, with the acquired MR data being entered into k-space at respective positions of particular k-space points with a number of said particular k-space points being smaller than a number of all k-space points belonging to the imaging sequence;
• configure an aperture of each of the receiving antennae to cause data to be acquired at a respective k-space point, with a spectral main lobe of each receiving antenna also extending over k-space points that are adjacent to the respective k-space point;
• and
• reconstruct all image points that correspond to all of said k-space points, using respective sensitivity profiles of the receiving antennae to thereby take account of data from k-space points at positions at which no MR data were acquired.