Trigonometric functions are mathematical functions of an angle. There are six basic trigonometric functions (Sine (sin), Cosine (cos), Tangent (tan), Cotangent (cot), Secant (sec), Cosecant (cosec)), commonly defined as ratios of two sides of a right triangle. Used in MRI for Cartesian sampling, to describe radio frequency signals, etc.

Cartesian sampling is used to refer to data collection with a fixed value of the phase encoding gradient. In 2D Fourier imaging with common Cartesian sampling of k-space sensitivity encoding by means of a receiver array enables to reduce the number of Fourier encoding steps. This is achieved by increasing the distance of sampling positions in k-space while maintaining the maximum k-values.
The Cartesian coordinates are obtained from the polar coordinates by the operations
x = r sin f
y = r cos f
using the trigonometric functions sine and cosine.