Maxwell's Equation Tailored Reverse Method of Obtaining Coil Sensitivity for Parallel MRI

Jin Jin¹, Feng Liu¹, Yu Li¹, Ewald Weber¹, Stuart Crozier¹

A new method is proposed to obtain noise-free RF coil sensitivity maps. This is highly desirable, considering the fact that the sensitivity encoding (SENSE) method imposes ultimate dependence of successful full FOV image reconstruction on the correct sensitivity map of each individual coil. The proposed method differs from traditional methods in that, instead of refining the measured sensitivity maps by means of numerical approximation and/or extrapolation, it is based on physics of electromagnetics, parameterization and optimization algorithms. Preliminary simulations show substantial improvement in sensitivity maps constructed by proposed method compared to traditional polynomial fitting method and consequently in reconstructed images.