Figure 1: Illustration and implementation of the proposed multi-step joint-blade (MJB) SENSE reconstruction.

(a) Illustration of MJB SENSE. Simple single-blade (SSB) SENSE is performed first to estimate blade-combined images, providing regularization to reconstruct each blade again in the next step. Then, relatively clean blade-combined images can be obtained, which are used to widen the acquired blades and form regularization for joint-blade SENSE. (b) The detailed implementation of MJB SENSE with motion correction. Motion parameters are initially estimated in Step 1 (SSB SENSE), updated in Step 2, and utilized in Step 3 (joint-blade SENSE). In Steps 2 and 3, the regularization (back-substitution) is performed through virtual blades that are resampled from the blade-combined images from the previous step. Blade widening is also performed through virtual blades. Optionally, the iteration (dashed line) is performed by feeding the reconstructed images from Step 3 to Step 2. (c) Illustration of the interim images in MJB SENSE as labeled in (b). image 1 – aliased blade images, image 2 – coil sensitivity maps, image 3 – SSB SENSE blade images, image 4 – SSB SENSE blade-combined images, image 5 – virtual blades, image 6 – the blade images reconstructed by Step 2, image 7 – the blade-combined images reconstructed by Step 2, image 8 – “wide” virtual blades, image 9 – widened blades, image 10 – MJB SENSE reconstructed images.