Patent ID: 6891370

Claim:
A method for three dimensional phase unwrapping for use in magnetic resonance imaging comprising: a) selecting a voxel of interest from a plurality of voxels in a volume of interest of a magnetic resonance phase wrapped image, wherein the voxel of interest has a predetermined phase value; b) identifying neighboring voxels in a neighborhood of the voxel of interest wherein each of the neighboring voxels has a respective phase value; c) adjusting the respective phase values of the neighboring voxels to correct for phase jumps, wherein each of the neighboring voxels is assigned a respective adjusted phase value; d) determining respective absolute phase difference values corresponding to each of respective neighboring voxels; e) sorting the respective absolute phase difference values to select a smallest absolute phase difference value; f) tagging the voxel of interest as visited voxel; g) tagging the neighboring voxels as visited voxels; h) selecting a new voxel of interest corresponding to the smallest absolute phase difference value; i) identifying new neighboring voxels in the neighborhood of the new voxel of interest; j) repeating steps c through i in successive iterations until all voxels in the volume of interest have been tagged as visited voxels, wherein the neighboring voxels are new neighboring voxels in the successive iterations and wherein the voxel of interest is the new voxel of interest in the successive iterations; and k) displaying a phase unwrapped image.