A system and method for accelerated MR imaging includes a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system having a plurality of gradient coils positioned about a bore of a magnet, and an RF transceiver system and an RF switch controlled by a pulse module to transmit RF signals to an RF coil assembly comprising at least one RF transmit coil and comprising multiple coils to acquire MR images. The MRI apparatus also has a computer programmed to excite multiple pencil regions by use of an under-sampled echo-planar excitation trajectory and acquire MR signals simultaneously on multiple channels of the RF coil assembly. The computer is also programmed to separate contributions from the various multiple pencil regions by use of parallel imaging reconstruction.