Patent ID: 7949384

Claim:
A system, comprising: a data store for storing an input signal data received from an MRI or NMR system, where the input signal data includes two or more related sets of image data, where a set of image data is a set of k-space data that contains a peak k-space signal location; a first logic for processing the input signal data into a processed signal data, where the effects of one or more undesired phase shifting events on the input signal data are reduced in the processed signal data, where the undesired phase shifting events are one or more of, a variation in a main magnetic field in the MRI or NMR system and a misaligning of echoes in the input signal data, where the variation in the main magnetic field is one or more of, a temporal variation, a spatial variation, and a field strength variation, where the first logic identifies the peak k-space signal location for two or more of the related sets of image data and aligns the two or more related sets of image data based on peak k-space signal locations, and where the first logic processes the input signal by computing a phase shift due to a variation in B 0 by processing k-space data centered around and local to a peak k-space signal location; and a second logic for processing the processed signal data to quantify the effects of one or more desired phase shifting events.