Patent ID: 7230424

Claim:
A method of decreasing scan time in a magnetic resonance imaging scan, the method comprising the steps of: introducing an examination subject to a magnetic field; selecting a number of slices of the examination subject to acquire; selecting a number of scans to perform to repeatedly acquire the number of slices, the number of scans to be performed corresponding to a number of signal echoes to be superimposed; acquiring the number of scans by: applying a plurality of RF pulses to the examination subject, the RF pulses related by a phase increment per excitation, each one of the plurality of RF pulses exciting two or more slices; applying gradient magnetic fields to the examination subject; and collecting magnetic resonant signals from the examination subject corresponding to each of the number of slices selected; reconstructing the number of slices acquired to generate intermediate images; separating the intermediate images into discrete data sets; replacing image data in the discrete data sets with null image data; deconstructing the resulting combination of image data and null image data to create rows of k-space data; summing the rows of k-space data; and reconstructing the summed rows of k-space data to produce the selected number of images.