Multiplication of acquired MR data by a function smoothly tapering off at higher spatial frequencies so as to reduce ringing artifacts near edges in the corresponding image or spectrum due to truncation and Gibbs phenomenon. It is a form of filtering.

In mathematics, the Gibbs phenomenon (also known as ringing artifacts, named after the American physicist J. Willard Gibbs) is the peculiar manner in which the Fourier series of a piecewise continuously differentiable periodic function f behaves at a jump discontinuity: the nth partial sum of the Fourier series has large oscillations near the jump, which might increase the maximum of the partial sum above that of the function itself. The overshoot does not die out as the frequency increases, but approaches a finite limit.
In MRI, artifactual ripples parallel to abrupt and intense changes are caused by the Fourier transformation.

See Gibbs Artifact, Truncation Artifact, Ringing Artifact Reduction.