Iterative Tuning of System Delay and Phase Correction for Echo-Planar Imaging

Holger Eggers¹

Different phase corrections are commonly applied in echo-planar imaging to reduce ghosting artifacts arising from differences in the sample positions for echoes acquired with positive and negative readout gradient polarity. In this work, it is demonstrated that especially the nonlinear phase corrections are susceptible to a badly adjusted system delay. A new, iterative procedure for a joint tuning of the system delay and the phase correction is proposed to improve tolerance in this respect and is shown to substantially reduce ghosting artifacts in adverse conditions.