Dynamic range compression in MRI by means of a nonlinear gradient pulse.

In current magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), valuable information must often be discarded because the NMR signal has greater dynamic range than the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) hardware. Typically, a small set of high-intensity data points near the center of the spin echo is responsible for most of the MRI data dynamic range. We predict that it is possible to reduce the dynamic range of the MRI spin echo by incorporating an identical nonlinear gradient pulse into each repetition of the imaging pulse sequence, prior to data sampling. This pulse converts the phase distribution of the subject, ordinarily a linear function of image coordinates, into a nonlinear function. A nonlinear phase distribution can have a negligible impact on image magnitude and yet a profound impact on spin-echo magnitude. Given a nonlinear phase distribution, there will no longer be a single data point at which all of the protons have an identical phase (the echo center). Instead, the protons become phase coherent on a piecemeal basis, the echo peak is smoothed out, and its maximum amplitude and dynamic range are greatly diminished. Using gradient pulses of quadratic spatial variation, we estimate that maximum echo amplitude and dynamic range can be reduced in most cases by an order of magnitude.