Combination of sensitivity encoding and Partial Fourier in fast thin-slab 3D MR imaging

Sensitivity Encoding (SENSE) has been widely used in fast imaging which removes the aliasing using coil sensitivities. However there are two problems applied in the second phase encoding (slice) direction in thin slab 3D imaging. First, the received B1 field knowledge may not be able to provide adequate sensitivity information due to the region of the coil cover is small. Second, the noise amplification of the reconstruction of SENSE will further expand the influence of RF leakage which degrades the quality of the image. In this work, we propose a 3D fast imaging method which combines Partial Fourier acquisition along second phase encoding (slice) direction with SENSE along first phase encoding (phase) direction. The method can efficiently reduces acquisition time with high image quality. The result of experiments using 3D GRE sequence in phantom at 3T Siemens system showed the performance of this approach.