Method and apparatus for compensating magnetic field inhomogeneity artifact in MRI

摘要

A measure of magnetic field inhomogeneity along a phase-encoded (e.g. y-axis) dimension is derived in k-space from previously acquired MRI phase-encoded projection data. From this, a measure of MRI data skewing caused by such inhomogeneity is obtained and used to compensate therefor. Since the MRI data is to be multi-dimensionally Fourier Transformed in most instances anyway, a transform in the relevant phase encoded dimension (e.g., y-axis) is taken followed with phase shifting each digitized data point by an amount proportional to the measured magnitude of inhomogeneity and to the datum coordinate in the read-out dimension (e.g., x-axis) and to the datum coordinate in each phase-encode dimension (e.g., y-axis) before the data is further Fourier Transformed with respect to the read-out dimension (e.g., x-axis). If two-dimensional phase encoding is employed (e.g., as in 3DFT), then a second level of similar inhomogeneity compensation can be had in the third dimension (e.g., z-axis) as well.