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Maxwell Parallel Imaging

Purpose: To develop a general framework for Parallel Imaging (PI) with the use of Maxwell regularization for the estimation of the sensitivity maps (SMs) and constrained optimization for the parameter-free image reconstruction. Theory and Methods: Certain characteristics of both the SMs and the images are routinely used to regularize the otherwise ill-posed optimization-based joint reconstruction from highly accelerated PI data. In this paper we rely on a fundamental property of SMs--they are solutions of Maxwell equations-- we construct the subspace of all possible SM distributions supported in a given field-of-view, and we promote solutions of SMs that belong in this subspace. In addition, we propose a constrained optimization scheme for the image reconstruction, as a second step, once an accurate estimation of the SMs is available. The resulting method, dubbed Maxwell Parallel Imaging (MPI), works seamlessly for arbitrary sequences (both 2D and 3D) with any trajectory and minimal calibration signals. Results: The effectiveness of MPI is illustrated for a wide range of datasets with various undersampling schemes, including radial, variable-density Poisson-disc, and Cartesian, and