SIMA: simultaneous multislice acquisition of MR images by Hadamard-encoded excitation

We present a method of multislice magnetic resonance imaging that utilizes simultaneous binary-encoded excitation. Signals are acquired from all slices at once, and the images are separated in the reconstruction process. This simultaneous multislice acquisition method has been implemented for multislice spin-echo imaging, and the results are compared with those for a standard interleaved multislice method. Advantages include improved signal-to-noise ratios and flexible slice placement. Phantom and volunteer studies are presented and evaluated in comparison with competing methods.