Flexible ordering for multiple slice MRI

A method of ordering slices for interleaved magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), comprising:

• a. selecting a number of interleaved slice locations (NS) using an MRI machine, wherein each said interleaved slice comprises a plurality of excitations (NE,S) where S is the slice number between 1 and NS and NE,S may differ for different slice numbers;
• b. selecting an excitation duration (TS) of each said excitation in each said slice using said MRI machine;
• c. selecting a repetition time (TR) using said MRI machine between successive excitations of the same slice, wherein said TR has a duration of Ni×TS, wherein Ni is the number of interleaved slices per TR period;
• and
• d. arranging the order for said slices such that the total scan time (T) is minimized such that TR is the product of Ni and Ts, wherein said Ni can be arbitrarily chosen between 1 and NT/NE,max wherein NT is the total number of excitations for all said slices and wherein NE,max is the maximum number of said excitations for one said slice.