Comparison of the main magnetic resonance imaging acceleration strategies based on parallel imaging techniques

The main parallel imaging techniques have been implemented under MATLAB (SENSE, PILS and SPACE-RIP for image domain, and SMASH and GRAPPA for k-space domain), evaluating its characteristics about image quality and signal to noise ratio. PILS and SMASH, with an specific coil configuration, provided the best results. SENSE and SPACE-RIP were more versatile with any coil configuration. All methods arrived to its acceleration factor theoretical limit (R=4 for 4 coils) with images without noise. Only those methods that depend on a matrix reconstruction inversion (SENSE and SPACE-RIP) did not arrive to the theoretical limit for noisy images due to its instability problems. PILS provided the best results although SENSE and SPACE-RIP can be applied under more general conditions. For the k-space domain methods, SMASH gave the best results under an specific coil array configuration.