Patent ID: 7906964

Claim:
A method for generating data associated with at least one portion of a target comprising: forwarding at least one first excitation pulse to the target; acquiring a first signal from the target resulting from the at least one first excitation pulse using a plurality of acquisition parameters having first values; forwarding at least one second excitation pulse to the target; acquiring a second signal from the target resulting from the at least one second excitation pulse using a plurality of acquisition parameters having second values, wherein at least two of the first values are different from the second values; generating the data based on the first and second signals; and determining the first values and second values for the acquisition parameters based on a restriction, wherein the determination of the first values and the second values is performed by: selecting a type of sequence, identifying unknown physical quantities, determining a relationship between the sequence, data from the first acquired signal, data from the second acquired signal, the unknown physical quantities, and the acquisition parameters, defining cost function using the determined relationship, the cost function being a function of the acquisition parameters, the restriction, and the unknown physical quantities, and determining values for the acquisition parameters by minimizing the cost function.