The aim of this proposal is to develop a Hardware/Software setup that can be appended to any existing multi-channel MRI system in order to provide it with SPACE RIP parallel imaging capability. The SPACE RIP technique is a parallel image acquisition and reconstruction technique that allows for the flexible choice of phase encoding, and is very well suited for coil sensitivity profile self-calibration; This setup would require minimal change to the pulse sequence in order to allow the user the choice of an acceleration factor, and would enable faster image acquisition on these MRI systems. Once the user chooses the acceleration factor, a program computes the optimal phase encodes to be acquired and would direct the pulse sequence to execute. Once the data is acquired, it is transferred to a multi-processor computer connected to the scanner, where it is processed with the SPACE RIP algorithm. The images are reconstructed off-line in real-time and transferred back to the scanner's memory for viewing and archiving. All existing multi-channel MRI systems may benefit from this setup, as well as new systems. The initial marketing effort will be directed towards General Electric Medical Systems (GEMS) scanners. MRI Dynamics Inc. will pursue a current interest with GEMS to form a partnership and leverage GEMS's marketing and sales forces to promote this product.
