A system and three methods are provided for massively parallel Magnetic Resonance Imaging of an object. They are based on using numerous, perhaps hundreds of, radio frequency receiver coils that measure Magnetic Resonance (MR) signal. In particular, the receiver coils are arranged both on-surface, i.e. relatively close and roughly parallel to the object surface, as well as off-surface, i.e. relatively distant or at a significant angle, such as 45 or 90 degrees, with respect to the object surface. The coils are arranged in a three-dimensional volume space at different positions, orientations, and distances, possibly in multiple layers. Each receiver coil is associated with a sensitivity map and provides partially under-sampled MR signal data with respect to frequency, phase, or k-space. The data from all coils are combined, using all the sensitivity maps in the image space or k-space, to obtain over-sampled data which is processed to reconstruct an unaliased image.