Patent ID: 8482279

Claim:
An MRI apparatus comprising: a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system having a plurality of gradient coils positioned about a bore of a magnet, and an 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: acquire a plurality of three-dimensional (3D) MR data sets, each 3D MR data set acquired using a central transmit frequency and a central receive frequency set to an offset frequency value that is distinct for each 3D MR data set, wherein at least a portion of each 3D MR data set is accelerated k-space data, and wherein at least one of the plurality of 3D MR data sets comprises fully-sampled calibration k-space data lines; determine reconstruction weights from the fully-sampled calibration k-space data lines; reconstruct an image for each 3D MR data set using the reconstruction weights from the fully-sampled calibration k-space data lines to synthesize unacquired data; and generate a composite image from the reconstructed images based on the plurality of 3D MR data sets.