Patent Document ID: 20020167316
Application ID: 09855105
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for use with a multiple receiver coil magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system used to generate a two dimensional slice image through an object where the field of view during data acquisition is smaller than the object cross section to be imaged such that upon transforming acquired k space data into image data, the resulting wrapped images include wrapped image sections where wrapped pixel intensities include intensity from each of a properly located pixel and at least one wrapped pixel, each receiver coil receiving an MRI signal from each location within the object cross section and having a coil specific sensitivity that indicates how the coil reacts to signals from the different points within the slice, the method for increasing the signal to noise ratio of image pixels upon unwrapping of wrapped image sections, the method comprising the steps of, for each pixel in the wrapped images: identifying the coil sensitivities for each coil in the multiple coil system and arranging the coil sensitivities to form a sensitivities matrix S for the pixel; arranging the intensities from each coil corresponding to the image pixel into an intensity matrix; generating a modified coil sensitivities matrix S′ by modifying sensitivities matrix S; inverting the modified sensitivities matrix; multiplying the inverted matrix by the intensity matrix to generate a spin densities matrix including unwrapped pixel spin densities corresponding to the pixel; and using the spin densities matrix to generate a final image.