Patent ID: 7701220

Claim:
An apparatus for receiving magnetic resonance signals, the apparatus comprising: a coils array including a plurality of coils adapted to be positioned to receive magnetic resonance signals emanating from an examination region of an associated magnetic resonance imaging scanner, each coil having corresponding mixing circuitry that frequency shifts the magnetic resonance signal received by the coil to a selected transmission channel frequency, the coils array further including combining circuitry that combines the frequency shifted magnetic resonance signals to produce an analog frequency domain multiplexed transmission signal output of the coils array; and receiver electronics that receive the analog frequency domain multiplexed transmission signal from the coils array, the receiver electronics including an analog to digital converter that digitizes the analog frequency domain multiplexed transmission signal to produce a corresponding digital frequency domain multiplexed transmission signal and digital signal processing circuitry that processes the digital frequency domain multiplexed transmission signal to recover digitized signals corresponding to the magnetic resonance signals received by the plurality of coils.