BRP: Null Space Imaging: A Novel Approach to Accelerating MR Imaging

This Bioengineering Research Partnership (BRP) led by Dr. Constable, is aimed at developing fast MRI acquisition times. The work focuses on a novel approach to accelerated imaging that re-envisions the role of gradient encoding when using parallel receiver coil arrays to encode some of the spatial information. The approach introduces nonlinear gradient encoding that can achieve acceleration factors of two or more over current state-of-the-art methods. The work has been patented and a licensing agreement with Siemens is in place to bring this approach to clinical MRI machines. The engineering partner in this work is Resonance Research Inc. a company with expertise in designing and building novel MRI gradient coils and other hardware. This work is general and can be applied to almost any MRI pulse sequence potentially leading to reduced scan times and higher throughput in clinical settings as well as opening up new applications in fast imaging.