For most MR imaging applications multiple surface coils are used to obtain images with high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). However, signal intensity strongly diminishes with distance. Although there are a number of approaches to combine the surface coil images to obtain a high SNR and bias-free image, most of them are developed in an ad hoc manner and lack a systematic treatment. In this work we propose a new approach, an iterative weighted constrained least squares (WCLS) restoration method, for combining surface coil images. The algorithm is fully automated and outperforms approaches which appeared in the literature.
['S.D. Babacan', 'Xiaoming Yin', 'Andrew C. Larson', 'Aggelos K. Katsaggelos']
Combination of MR surface coil images using weighted constrained least squares