Can RF Encoding Improve Parallel Imaging?

¹Robert Steiner MRI Unit, Imaging Sciences Department, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London, London, UK

Scanning times can be reduced by combining gradient and coil encoding - Partially Parallel Imaging (PPI). Adding RF encoding to PPI can improve reconstruction quality for particular gradient encoding schemes. We investigate if this result is general in the absence of prior object knowledge. Simulated PPI reconstruction matrices were built for several schemes and modified using RF modulation. The set of RF modulations leading to lowest condition numbers were sought. No improvements were observed for regular sampling. Other schemes benefited from RF encoding, with condition numbers reducing to the level of non-RF modulated regular matrices.