iPAT
Siemens's integrated Parallel Acquisition Technique — parallel-imaging acceleration that uses multi-coil spatial information to skip k-space lines, speeding scans. Vendor analogs: SENSE / Compressed SENSE (Philips), ASSET (GE), ARC / HyperSense (newer GE), SPEEDER (Canon).
Why it matters to buyers: Shorter scan times (2×, 3×, 4× acceleration typical, higher with combined techniques). Reduces breath-hold burden, motion artifact, and patient time-on-table. Acceleration tier is a meaningful refurb price-determining variable.
Why it matters to engineers: Parallel imaging increases SNR penalty proportional to acceleration factor — there's no free lunch, but the trade-off is favorable on most clinical sequences. Compressed SENSE (Philips) and Deep Resolve (Siemens) extend the technique with sparsity / DL priors.