A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system (500), the system includes at least one controller (510) which performs a modified rotated slab excitation (mROSE) sequence for volume selection to exclude portions of a subject under exam which are within the scanning volume and outside of a field-of-view (FOV) so as to reduce foldover artifacts which originate from the excluded portions of the subject under exam, where the mROSE sequence performs volume excitation based upon either optimized symmetrical, minimum-phase, or stretched minimum-phase radio-frequency (RF) pulses in a sagittal plane and encodes the scanning volume in a coronal plane. The controller also performs a chemical-shift sequence including a modified DIXON (mDIXON) sequence for substantially uniform fat/water separation within a FOV which lies within the scanning volume; and/or acquires echo information for reconstructing at least a part of an image.