Suchandrima Banerjee1, Cornelius Von Morze2, Douglas AC Kelley1, Philip J. Beatty1, Daniel B. Vigneron2, Eric T. Han1
1Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, USA; 2Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Multi-echo sequences provide a time-efficient means to acquire in a single scan - multiple images, each at a different clinically relevant contrast weighting. Parallel imaging has the potential to further increase the time efficiency of such sequences, but its application can be limited by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) available at the longest acquired echo time. To overcome this limitation, this work proposes a scheme that selectively applies parallel imaging to the higher SNR echoes, while reducing the spatial resolution and maintaining Nyquist sampling of the lower SNR echoes. We demonstrate the efficacy of this method for two dual echo applications.