In an MRI imaging system each portion of k-space is sequentially scanned, transformed and separately demodulated. Instead of adding the k-space regions, as is the practice in the prior art, the demodulated portions are added, each representing spectral portions of the image. Each k-space portion is scanned with closely spaced lines which substantially satisfy the sampling requirement to avoid aliasing. In this way, distortion resulting from phase changes between k-space scans is avoided.