Use of multicoil arrays for separation of signal from multiple slices simultaneously excited

Increased acquisition efficiency has been achieved by exciting several slic es simultaneously. The mixed data were unfolded to produce separate slices using the spatial encoding Information inherent in a multicoil receiver sys tem. Each coil yields a linear combination of signals from all excited slic es weighted by the sensitivity of each coil. A matrix inversion provides a solution to unfold these images. (C) 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.