Aliasing is an
artifact that occurs in MR images when the scanned body part is larger than
field of view (
FOV). As a consequence of the acquired
k-space frequencies not being sampled densely enough, whereby portions of the object outside of the desired
FOV get mapped to an incorrect location inside the
FOV. The cyclical property of the
Fourier transform fills the missing data of the right side with data from behind the
FOV of the left side and vice versa. This is caused by a too small number of samples acquired in, e.g. the
frequency encoding direction, therefore the spectrums will
overlap, resulting in a replication of the object in the x direction.
Aliasing in the
frequency direction can be eliminated by twice as fast
sampling of the signal or by applying
frequency specific filters to the received signal.
A similar problem occurs in the
phase encoding direction, where the phases of signal-bearing tissues outside of the
FOV in the y-direction are a replication of the phases that are encoded within the
FOV.
Phase encoding gradients are scaled for the
field of view only, therefore tissues outside the
FOV do not get properly
phase encoded relative to their actual position and 'wraps' into the opposite side of the image.