Magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging with a variable repetition time in conjunction with a variable data acquisition time

A method of generating a spectroscopic image using magnetic resonance in a sample comprising:

• locating a sample having a volume of interest in a magnetic field;
• obtaining spectroscopic data from voxels within the volume of interest of the sample by subjecting the sample to repeated magnetic resonance experiments with incremented phase-encoding magnetic field gradients applied in one, two or three dimensions in which the sample is excited and phase-encoded during an excitation time in which the sample emits signals in response to the excitation which are detected during a data acquisition time, and in which the sample magnetization relaxes towards equilibrium values during a subsequent delay time;
• wherein each experiment is effected over a repetition time TR which is defined by the sum of the excitation time, the data acquisition time and any delay time prior to the next experiment;
• wherein the TR is not kept constant for all experiments required to complete the acquisition of all phase-encoded signals, but is systematically reduced as a function of experiments encoding increasing spatial frequency within the volume of interest;
• and wherein the data acquisition time is reduced for experiments encoding higher spatial frequencies relative to the data acquisition time for experiments encoding lower spatial frequencies of the volume of interest, thus allowing shorter TR periods for experiments encoding higher spatial frequencies while maintaining longer TR periods with longer data acquisition times for experiments encoding lower spatial frequencies.