1Magnetic Resonance Center, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, 2Biomedical Magnetic Resonance, University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Averaging
is a frequently used way to increase the SNR of a measurement. Here we show
that spending the additional time for increasing the spatial resolution and applying
a retrospective k-space filter can yield a higher SNR gain than conventional
averaging. For weighting in two phase encoding directions, this can increase
the SNR by up to 25%. For 3D weighting, SNR gain can reach 57%, if the
additional acquired k-space points are used to increase the readout duration,
and 38% for equal duration for weighted and unweighted acquisition.