Magnetic resonance method and apparatus for determination of quantitative tissue parameters

A magnetic resonance (MR) apparatus comprising:

• an MR data acquisition scanner;
• a computer configured to determine a signal model with m different signal parameters, which influence an MR signal of the examination subject;
• said computer being configured to operate an MR data acquisition scanner in order to acquire N different MR images of the examination subject, with m<=N, and to determine measured data tuples with N measured values from the N MR images on a pixel-by-pixel basis;
• said computer being configured to create a lookup table with a plurality of table entries, wherein each entry assigns an N-dimensional tuple of synthesized measured values to an m-dimensional tuple of signal parameters that have been calculated using the signal model;
• said computer being configured to pre-process the lookup table that has been created in order to produce a sorted lookup table;
• and
• said computer being configured to determine at least some of the signal parameters by comparing the pixel-by-pixel measured data tuples with N-dimensional tuples of the synthesized measured values in the sorted lookup table for at least some of the pixels.

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, said programming instructions causing said computer to:

• determine a signal model with m different signal parameters, which influence an MR signal of the examination subject;
• operate an MR data acquisition scanner in order to acquire N different MR images of the examination subject, with m<=N, and in said computer determining measured data tuples with N measured values from the N MR images on a pixel-by-pixel basis;
• create a lookup table with a plurality of table entries, wherein each entry assigns an N-dimensional tuple of synthesized measured values to an m-dimensional tuple of signal parameters that have been calculated using the signal model;
• pre-process the lookup table that has been created in order to produce a sorted lookup table;
• and
• determine at least some of the signal parameters by comparing the pixel-by-pixel measured data tuples with N-dimensional tuples of the synthesized measured values in the sorted lookup table for at least some of the pixels.