Current bolus chase magnetic resonance angiography is limited by the imaging time for each station. Tailoring the density of k-space sampling along the anterior-posterior direction of the coronal station allows a substantial decrease in scan time that leads to greater contrast bolus sharing among stations and consequently a significant improvement in image quality. Fast arterial-venous transit in the carotid arteries requires accurate, reliable timing of the acquisition to the bolus transit to maximize arterial signal and minimize venous artifacts. The rising edge of the bolus is not utilized in conventional elliptical-centric view ordering because the critical k-space center must be acquired with full arterial enhancement. The invention provides a recessed elliptical-centric view ordering scheme is introduced in which the k-space center is acquired a few seconds following scan initiation. The recessed view ordering is shown to be more robust to timing errors in a patient studies.