Spiral scanning has been used to achieve much shorter scan times than
conventional techniques for a wide range of applications, The major dr
awback with spiral scans is blurring from off-resonant spins, which is
proportional to the readout time. Blurring limits maximal spatial res
olution and minimal scan time potentially achievable with spiral scann
ing. Anisotropic field of view is used in conventional scanning to imp
rove image quality by matching k-space trajectory to object characteri
stics, Anisotropic field of view improves spatial resolution in spiral
scanning without increasing scan time or blurring. The resolution imp
rovement results from increased maximal k-space radius allowed by the
lower field of view. A field of view reduction by a factor of 2 in one
direction provides up to 60% resolution improvement in that direction
. Reduced SNR also results from non-uniform k-space sampling.