Patent Document ID: 20070090839
Application ID: 11436050
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. Method of magnetic resonance imaging comprising the steps of: exciting magnetic resonant (MR) active nuclei in a region of interest; creating magnetic field gradients in a phase-encode direction for spatially encoding the excited MR active nuclei to produce a field of view corresponding to the region of interest; receiving radio frequency data from the region of interest using an array of at least two radio frequency receive coils; and producing from the radio frequency data an image by combining images S i obtained from the radio frequency signals of single coils C i of the array and weighting the images S i of each coil C i with the a sensitivity B i of the corresponding coil C i , wherein an estimated sensitivity B i ′ (Fourier domain) of each coil C i of the array being used, which is determined by applying a smoothing filter f i to a k-space data set s i received from each coil C i ; wherein the f i smoothing filter is estimated from spatial frequency content of a k-space sensitivity profile of each coil, and wherein for a one-dimensional sensitivity profile the filter f i is configured as a k-space filter with a triangular shape and for a two-dimensional sensitivity profile the filter f i is configured as a k-space filter with a pyramidal shape, the triangular filter having a width and the pyramidal filter having a base is double a maximum spatial frequency of the corresponding coil field.