Patent ID: 7372266

Claim:
A method for improving SSFP data obtained in a steady state free precession (SSFP) gradient echo procedure, in particular, of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) tomography, wherein a regular sequence of radio frequency pulses with flip angle α is applied at temporally constant intervals TR, and wherein the phase of these pulses is increased by a constant phase increment in successive steps, said method comprising: performing a predetermined phase encoding scheme in such a manner that each individual phase encoding step is identically repeated N times under the following conditions: N is an even number and N≧2, i.e. (N=2, 4, 6, 8, . . . ); Successive measured NMR signals are averaged, and wherein, the N-fold measuring time extension which is inherent in the method is completely or partially compensated for by an acceleration factor M through application of parallel imaging in order to minimize artifacts produced through incrementation of phase encoding gradients during production of gradient echo data, generating signals in response to the radio frequency pulses; and transforming the signals into a data image.