SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PRODUCING DISTORTION FREE MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGES USING DUAL-ECHO ECHO-PLANAR IMAGING

摘要

Described here are systems and methods for correcting magnetic resonance datafor off-resonance effects arising from the use of a multi-echo echo planarimaging("EPI") pulse sequence. Reference data are acquired, from which phase maps arecomputed in a distorted coordinate space associated with geometric distortionsassociated with the multi-echo EPI acquisition. Images reconstructed from themagneticresonance data are demodulated using the distorted phase maps to producedistortionfree images of the subject. Advantageously, the systems and methods can beused toreconstruct distortion free images from magnetic resonance data that isotherwiseprone to image distortions from off-resonance errors, including data acquiredfromhyperpolarized nuclear spin species such as hyperpolarized carbon-13.