Patent ID: 7877129

Claim:
A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus comprising: magnetic field generation means for applying gradient magnetic fields and high frequency magnetic fields to a patient placed in static magnetic fields in a predetermined pulse sequence while thinning phase encoding steps, a receiving coil group comprising a plurality of RF receiving coils for receiving the nuclear magnetic resonance signals generated from the patient, and image reconstruction means for reconstructing an image by processing the nuclear magnetic resonance signals, wherein the receiving coil group comprises at least one main RF receiving coil having a high sensitivity region in a diagnosing portion of the patient and at least two sets of auxiliary RF receiving coil groups each set including at least two auxiliary RF receiving coils disposed in confrontation with each other in either of at least two orthogonal directions, and the high sensitivity region of the respective auxiliary RF receiving coils is formed narrower than that of the main RF receiving coil; and the image reconstruction means eliminates the aliasing of an image by an arithmetic operation executed based on the magnetic resonance signals received by the main RF receiving coil and at least one set of the respective auxiliary RF receiving coils disposed in confrontation with each other in at least a phase encoding direction and based on the sensitivity distributions of these RF receiving coils.