Patent ID: 7298144

Claim:
A method of separating and imaging at least two species using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) comprising steps of: a) acquiring low resolution image information at multiple echo times, b) acquiring some fraction of the higher resolution information at multiple echo times, c) estimating low resolution images of species content and a low resolution field map estimate from (a) including low pass filtering the acquired data, and performing a Fourier transform on the filtered data to obtain the low resolution source images in a sampled k-space direction and estimating a magnetic field map using the low resolution source images and determining phase of the low resolution species images, d) using the low resolution images of species content and low resolution field map estimates in (c) to reconstruct higher resolution species images from the partial information in (b), wherein step d) includes separately filtering the acquired image information of steps a) and b) with a transition filter and performing a Fourier transform of the filtered data to obtain filtered source images, estimating high resolution species images from the filtered source images using the field map from step (c), demodulating the phase of low resolution species images determined from step (c) from estimated higher resolution species images, and calculating final species images from the real parts of the phase demodulated higher resolution species images.