Coil combination using linear deconvolution in k-space for phase imaging

The combination of multi-channel data is a critical step for the imaging of phase and susceptibility contrast in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Magnitude-weighted phase combination methods often produce noise and aliasing artifacts in the magnitude images at accelerated imaging sceneries. To address this issue, an optimal coil combination method through deconvolution in k-space is proposed in this paper.

The proposed method firstly employs the sum-of-squares and phase aligning method to yield a complex reference coil image which is then used to calculate the coil sensitivity and its Fourier transform. Then, the coil k-space combining weights is computed, taking into account the truncated frequency data of coil sensitivity and the acquired k-space data. Finally, combining the coil k-space data with the acquired weights generates the k-space data of proton distribution, with which both phase and magnitude information can be obtained straightforwardly. Both phantom and in vivo imaging experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method.

Compared with magnitude-weighted method and MCPC-C, the proposed method can alleviate the phase cancellation in coil combination, resulting in a less wrapped phase.

The proposed method provides an effective and efficient approach to combine multiple coil image in parallel MRI reconstruction, and has potential to benefit routine clinical practice in the future.