The present disclosure is directed to an apparatus for imaging a subject using MR imaging, and a method of exciting nuclei of the subject within an imaging plane using one or more transmitter circuits tuned to a first transmission frequency, sampling MR signals generated from the nuclei at the same time using one or more receiver circuits each receiver circuit having a bandwidth less than 500 kHz, and generating a MR image based on the sampled MR signals. The speed of MR imaging may be increased by providing multiple pairs of transmitter and receiver circuits to operate simultaneously on an imaging plane and/or by streamlining downstream signal processing using multiple phase detectors tuned to detect frequencies associated with particular phase shifts.