Ineffectiveness of averaging for reducing motion artifacts in half-Fourier MR imaging

Two data sets for half-Fourier imaging (HFI) can be collected in the same time as one data set for conventional full Fourier imaging (FFI). The hypothesis is that averaging twice as much data in HFI does not make ghost artifacts caused by motion have less signal intensity than in FFI. This hypothesis was tested with images of a human subject by measuring the standard deviation within regions of interest containing ghosts. The control experiment involved measuring the standard deviation on images from the same data reconstructed with FFI. The images were formed after averaging of one to eight data sets from a collection of nine data sets acquired sequentially. Background ghosts or those in other regions of low intensity were less intense on images from HFI after twice as much averaging as in FFI, but this was not the case for ghosts superimposed on anatomic structures. This observation is explained by showing that an image obtained by means of FFI can be expressed in terms of two images obtained by means of HFI applied to the top and bottom halves of the data. The use of HFI to allow twice as much averaging without prolonging data acquisition time is not advantageous for reducing ghost artifacts caused by motion.