Patent ID: 7141971

Claim:
A method of processing magnetic resonance imaging signals from a plurality of magnetic resonance imaging coils, comprising: receiving a plurality of signals, s 1 , s 2 , . . . , s p , from a corresponding plurality of magnetic resonance coils; creating a subset of the plurality of signals, s 1 , s 2 , . . . , s n , corresponding to a subset of the plurality of magnetic resonance coils, where n<p, to produce signal vector S=[s 1 , s 2 , . . . , s n ], wherein the subset of the plurality of signals represent a corresponding plurality of pixel values for a location; determining a noise covariance matrix, N, of the subset of the plurality of magnetic resonance imaging coils, wherein the noise covariance matrix, N, of the subset of the plurality of magnetic resonance imaging coils is a Hermitian symmetric matrix; converting signal vector S to signal vector Ŝ, where, Ŝ=(K*) −1 ·S and N=K*K, where K is a matrix for which the conjugate row-column transpose of K, K*, multiplied by the matrix K is the noise covariance matrix, N; calculating a composite pixel value for the location, √{square root over (Ŝ*·Ŝ)}, where Ŝ*=[(K*) −1 ·S]* and producing a pixel for the location in an image, wherein the pixel for the location in the image has the calculated composite pixel for the location.