The phased array coils operate typically as receive only coils. In that case, the in the MRI device implemented body coil act as the transmitter and sends the radio frequency energy to generate the excitation pulses. State-of-the-art array coil systems include the use of 4 (up to 32) coils with separate receivers. This method is often referred to as a phased array system, although the signals are not added such that the signal phase information is included. The use of phased array coils allows the decreasing of the number of signal averages, which shortens the scan time by high SNR and resolution.
High-sensitivity RF surface coils and digital processing algorithms have been developed that speed up image acquisition and reconstruction during the MRI scan.
Fast parallel imaging techniques, for example sensitivity encoding (SENSE), 'Partially Parallel Imaging with Localized Sensitivity' (PILS), Simultaneous Acquisition of Spatial Harmonics (SMASH) or Array Spatial Sensitivity Encoding Technique (ASSET) use phased array multichannel coils to further improve spatial and temporal resolution. The sensitivity profile of a phased array coil element is measured by a separate low resolution 3D acquisition over the entire field of view in the case of a SENSE acquisition. For an mSENSE measurement, a self-calibration acquires some of the missing lines in the center of the k-space.
Also called linear array coil or synergy surface coil.

See also the related poll result: '3rd party coils are better than the original manufacturer coils'

Prepulses are prior to the excitation. To optimize, this is usually as short as possible. The time from the prepulse to the center of K-space (K0) is the prepulse delay time, also known as the inversion time (TI). Prepulses are more effective if the flip angle is kept as short as possible to values such as 10 to 30 ms.

The Mx and My data (digital MR signal) sampled and stored during data acquisition as a function of time and phase from an MRI sequence are called raw data. The horizontal axis is the frequency code, the vertical axis the phase code (of the protons).
Every point in the raw data matrix contains part of the information for the complete image. A point in the raw data matrix does not correspond to a point in the image matrix. The outer rows of the raw data matrix provide information regarding the borders and contours of the image, detailed structures, and also determine the resolution. This is also called k-space data.

This function is similar to partial averaging in that the complex conjugate relationship between the both halves of k-space is used to shorten the echo time in an imaging sequence.

See Partial Echo.

The mathematical process by which the displayed image is produced from the raw k-space data obtained from the receiver circuitry, typically utilizing Fourier transformation and selective filtering.