Combination of multidimensional navigator echoes data from multielement RF coil

Until now, only one-dimensional navigator-echo techniques have been implemented with multielement RF coils. For the multidimensional navigator echoes, which extract six-degree of freedom motion information from the raw k-space data, an efficient raw data combination approach is needed. In this work, three combination approaches, including summation of the complex raw data, summation following phase alignment, and summation of the squares of the k-space magnitude profiles, were evaluated with the spherical navigator echoes (SNAV) technique. In vivo brain imaging experiments were used to quantify accuracy and precision and demonstrated that SNAVs acquired with an eight-channel head coil can determine the rotation and translation in range up to 10° and 20 mm with subdegree and submillimeter accuracy, respectively. Results from a 3D brain volume realignment experiment showed excellent agreement between baseline images and SNAV-aligned follow-up volumes.