Patent ID: 8760163

Claim:
A method for generating phase-corrected diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance data, comprising the steps of: operating a magnetic resonance data acquisition unit with a multi-shot, diffusion-weighted pulse sequence, comprising excitation of nuclear spins, diffusion preparation, and data readout, to acquire diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance data and navigator data, said diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance data exhibiting phase errors; entering said diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance data and said navigator data into an electronic memory at 3D locations respectively representing points in k-space having a k-space center, by entering, for each shot in said multi-shot diffusion-weighted pulse sequence, navigator data into a fixed 3D block at said k-space center and entering said diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance data into an offset 3D block in k-space that is different in at least one spatial direction from said fixed 3D block, each of said fixed 3D block and said offset 3D block being a subset of an entirety of k-space, and varying said offset of said offset 3D block from shot-to-shot until said entirety of k-space is filled by said diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance data; and in a computerized processor having access to said memory, correcting said phase errors in said diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance data entered in k-space using said navigator data entered in k-space, and thereby generating phase-corrected, diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance data, and making said phase-corrected diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance data available for further processing as an electronic data file.