Patent Document ID: 10114100
Application ID: 15150915
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for Magnetic Resonance Imaging to depict a 3-dimensional object by an image having pixels representing volume elements of the object, comprising: immobilising the object and acquiring a reference image of the object with a receiver coil at a first echo time immediately following an excitation by a transmitter coil, wherein said reference image is complex-valued, representing each volume element by a pixel with a reference magnitude value and a reference phase value; keeping the object immobilised and acquiring a target image of the object with said receiver coil at a pre-selected second echo time, longer than said first echo time, following the same or another excitation by said transmitter coil, wherein said target image is complex-valued, representing each volume element by a pixel with a target magnitude value and a target phase value; subtracting, pixel by pixel, the reference phase value from the target phase value to obtain a corrected phase value for each pixel; and obtaining said image from said target magnitude values and said corrected phase values, wherein the method is applied to each of a plurality of receiver coils arranged around said immobilised object to obtain a respective plurality of said images, followed by the step of calculating a combined phase image, pixel by pixel, according to ϑ S = ∠ ( ∑ p ⁢ ⁢ m T , p · e - i ⁡ ( ϑ T , p - ϑ R , p ) ) with <(⋅) denoting the four-quadrant tangent inverse operator, m T,p being the target magnitude value of a pixel, representing a volume element of the object, in a target image acquired with the p th receiver coil, ϑ T,p being the target phase value of said pixel, ϑ R,p being the reference phase value of a pixel, representing said volume element, in a reference image acquired with the p th receiver coil, and ϑ S being the phase value of a pixel, representing said volume element, in the combined phase image.