Patent ID: 7606612

Claim:
A method of controlling a magnetic resonance (MR) apparatus, where a probe, located in a vasculature of an organism at a first position, includes at least two magnetic resonance (MR) radio frequency (RF) reception coils, where the at least two MR RF reception coils are arranged linearly in the axial direction of the probe, and where the at least two MR RF reception coils are operationally connected to separate receiver channels of an MR imaging system that includes the MR apparatus, the method comprising: controlling the MR apparatus to create a single B 0 field; controlling the MR apparatus to excite, using a first MR pulse sequence, first precessing nuclear spins in at least a first region of the organism adjacent to the at least two MR RF reception coils in the organism, where the first MR pulse sequence is configured to phase encode the first precessing nuclear spins in a direction parallel to the axial direction of the probe, and where the first precessing nuclear spins are in the B 0 field; receiving a first plurality of response signals in the at least two MR RF reception coils, the first plurality of response signals representing nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signals from the first precessing spins in the first region; controlling the MR apparatus to simultaneously sample the first plurality of response signals using a first partially parallel technique to form a first reduced k-space dataset for each of the at least two MR RF reception coils; and processing the acquired first reduced k-space dataset for each of the at least two MR RF reception coils to generate a first full-volume dataset of the first region, where processing the first reduced k-space data set for each of the at least two MR RF reception coils is based, at least in part, on spatial information associated with the relative positions of the at least two MR RF reception coils.