Patent ID: 8482281

Claim:
A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus comprising: an MRI system having a plurality of gradient coils positioned about a bore of a magnet, and a radio-frequency (RF) transceiver system and an RF switch controlled by a pulse module to transmit RF signals to an RF coil assembly to acquire MR images; and a computer programmed to: implement a spin echo sequence to acquire magnetic resonance (MR) data from an object, wherein the spin echo sequence comprises an excitation RF pulse and at least one refocusing pulse per repetition time (TR) of the excitation pulse; transmit at least two component RF pulses in parallel channels during implementation of the spin echo sequence to refocus a plurality of spins in the object, wherein the at least two RF pulses produce a first refocusing RF pulse that refocuses the plurality of spins in the object; and reconstruct an image from spin echo sequence image data.