Acceleration Strategies for Data Sampling in Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a highly versatile imaging technique widely used in clinical practice. It can provide anatomical images with excellent soft tissue contrast and quantitative measurements of motion and flow. In addition, microscopic tissue structures such as neurological pathways and heart muscle fiber orientation can be assessed. One of the main challenges of MRI is the long acquisition time to ensure high spatial and/or temporal resolution and full three-dimensional coverage of the region of interest. This chapter will give an overview of how the MR signal is created and spatially encoded and how image information can be reconstructed from this raw data. Furthermore, approaches that reduce scan times by making data acquisition faster or by reducing the amount of required raw data will be discussed.