A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus is disclosed for performing a method to enhance the contrast when imaging blood vessels, wherein one data set is acquired via flow-sensitive black blood (BB) imaging, such that the phase of the image is related to the flow velocity in each voxel of the images and another data set is acquired via white blood (WB) imaging, such that flow regions have a higher amplitude than static regions. The phase of the BB images is corrected using a low-pass filter and then the corrected phase is filtered to enhance the flow regions, such that the phase in flow regions is closer to +/-180°. A weighted difference of the WB image and the resulting corrected image leads to an hybrid magnetic resonance angiography image with enhanced contrast between flow regions (blood vessels) and static regions.
