Method and magnetic resonance apparatus for calibrating coil sensitivities

A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus comprising:

• a magnetic resonance scanner having an antenna array including a plurality of reception coils, each of said reception coils having a coil sensitivity;
• a sequence controller connected to said magnetic resonance scanner for operating said magnetic resonance scanner to execute a continuous, uninterrupted pulse sequence comprising a plurality of reference scans of said subject with a first sequence kernel optimized for coil sensitivity calibration followed by a series of accelerated image scans of said subject with a second sequence kernel, different from said first sequence kernel optimized for imaging, by simultaneously obtaining magnetic resonance signals from said subject with multiple coils in said plurality of coils, and thereby obtaining a plurality of sets of reference data from said series of reference scans and a plurality of sets of image data from said series of accelerated image scans;
• and
• an image computer connected to said magnetic resonance scanner for receiving said sets of reference data and said sets of image data therefrom, said image computer calculating respective coil sensitivity maps from said sets of reference data for said coils, and operating on said sets of image data with a parallel reconstruction algorithm, employing said coil sensitivity maps, to reconstruct an image of said subject.