Abstract: A three dimensional magnetic resonance imaging technique is utilized to generate 1/Nth of a complete data set from a first selected slab (38a). The data set is complete in a read direction and a first phase encode direction and 1/Nth complete in a second phase encode direction. The selected slab is shifted by 1/Nth its dimension in the second phase encode direction and another 1/Nth complete data set is generated. This process is repeated until N data sets are generated. The N data sets are reconstructed into a slice image which slice images are stacked in a three dimensional final image memory (94) and which are projected (96) along a selected projection direction into a projection image (40). The process is repeated with each new data set replacing the oldest data set in memories (84.sub.1, 84.sub.2 . . .) to generate a stack of slice images which are projected into the projection image. At any time during the process, projection direction can be changed and the sliced data reprojected.