SPATIAL ENCODING MR DATA OF A MOVING SUBJECT USING A HIGHER-ORDER GRADIENT FIELD

The present invention includes a technique for use with magnetic resonance imaging that includes the application of a non-linear, higher-order gradient field in the presence of a moving object to be scanned. MR data is acquired as the object moves through the non-linear gradient field. Resulting images are contiguous and do not require the patching together of data in either k-space or image space and result in an image with expanded FOV in a longitudinal direction of the moving object.