Qing-San Xiang1, Frank Q. Ye2
1Radiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; 2Neurophysiology Imaging Facility, National Institute of Mental Health, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA
Geometric distortion and N/2 ghosting are two major artifacts in EPI. They can be simultaneously and instantaneously suppressed by a new method based upon Phase Labeling for Additional Coordinate Encoding (PLACE). Since all data are acquired within a single RF excitation, the correction is instant and thus the new method is termed iPLACE. A few central k-space lines are collected 3 times. This allows an effective N/2 ghost suppression, as well as further distortion correction. iPLACE has been demonstrated to be effective by phantom experiments performed on a 4.7 T scanner.