Advantages and artifacts of three-dimensional MR imaging

Three-dimensional MR imaging, which consists of simultaneous excitation and acquisition from a contiguous set of sections, can exhibit significantly better noise efficiency (signal to noise per unit of time) than corresponding planar techniques. This advantage is greatest for fast (noninterleaved) imaging sequences and can be used to obtain image data with isologous (reformattable) voxel dimensions. The increased efficiency and the potential elimination of additional images can greatly reduce patient imaging time for certain studies. In this work, artifacts that have unique attributes in three-dimensional imaging (eg, chemical shift and wraparound in the ''section'' direction, ''Gibbs,'' and motion) and techniques for reduction are analyzed