An improved echo planar reconstruction method

In nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging, the echo planar method is used for fast scanning. Using conventional reconstruction methods, it requires twice as much data as Cartesian coordinate scanning due to sparse sampling on the edges of the Fourier plane. A noniterative reconstruction method is derived that requires only as much data as the Cartesian case. It operates by exactly interpolating bandlimited echo planar data into Cartesian coordinate data. In order to determine the loss in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to faster operation, simulations are made comparing the new algorithm to a control algorithm that uses the conventional amount of data. It is found that with the new method scanning can be done twice as fast with 46% of the conventional SNR.<>