Patent ID: 7436178

Claim:
A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus in which a fixed field of view is defined in which magnetic resonance is excited and phase and frequency are encoded, the apparatus including: a plurality of fixed global receive coils for receiving resonance signals from the fixed field of view; a means for moving a subject continuously through the fixed field of view during the excitation, phase and frequency encoding of magnetic resonance and the reception of the magnetic resonance, such that each of the fixed global receive coils receives resonance signals from the subject over an elongated virtual field of view, longer than the fixed field of view; a means for generating coil sensitivity patterns from static reference acquisitions corresponding to the fixed field of view for the fixed global receive coils; a folded image reconstruction means for reconstructing the k-space resonance signals corresponding to the global receive coils into corresponding folded image representations; a means for reconstructing fully sampled central regions of k-space into additional sensitivity patterns in the field of view corresponding to each of the global receive coils during the continuous movement; a means for mapping the sensitivity patterns from the fixed field of view corresponding to the global receive coils to the virtual field of view and for mapping the additional sensitivity patterns from the fixed field of view into the virtual field of view; and a SENSE reconstruction means for unfolding and combining the folded image representations in accordance with the sensitivity patterns mapped into the virtual field of view.