Receiver Bandwidth

Receiver bandwidth, often shortened to just 'bandwidth' and not to be confused with transmit bandwidth, is a selectable parameter that controls the range of frequencies to be sampled for an MR image. Indirectly, the bandwidth has implications in a number of things: chemical shift artifact, image contrast, geometric distortion, echo spacing, SAR, susceptibility artifact, motion artifact, field of view, sampling rate, and frequency encoding gradient amplitude. This complex list of effects can make bandwidth difficult to understand in isolation, especially as this parameter is interacted with differently across different vendors. It is perhaps best to consider the bandwidth through an image acquisition; for this example bandwidth will be in GE nomenclature: