Sectoral sampling in centric-scan SPRITE magnetic resonance imaging.

A new approach to the construction of k-space trajectories for centric-scan SPRITE in both 2D and 3D is presented. All benefits of previous SPRITE methods are retained, most importantly the ability to image objects with short T*(2). This new approach gives more flexibility in the choice of number of interleaves with points more evenly distributed across k-space. All these improvements positively contribute to image quality and resolution, which can be also traded off against experimental speed. Sectoral sampling will have significant benefits for magnetisation preparation contrast imaging.