Super‐resolved spatially encoded single‐scan 2D MRI

Single‐scan MRI underlies a wide variety of clinical and research activities, including functional and diffusion studies. Most common among these “ultrafast” MRI approaches is echo‐planar imaging. Notwithstanding its proven success, echo‐planar imaging still faces a number of limitations, particularly as a result of susceptibility heterogeneities and of chemical shift effects that can become acute at high fields. The present study explores a new approach for acquiring multidimensional MR images in a single scan, which possesses a higher built‐in immunity to this kind of heterogeneity while retaining echo‐planar imaging's temporal and spatial performances. This new protocol combines a novel approach to multidimensional spectroscopy, based on the spatial encoding of the spin interactions, with image reconstruction algorithms based on super‐resolution principles. Single‐scan two‐dimensional MRI examples of the performance improvements provided by the resulting imaging protocol are illustrated using phantom‐based and in vivo experiments. Magn Reson Med, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.