1. A system for displaying a composite magnetic resonance (MR) image of a patient, said system comprising: a memory configured to store a magnitude MR image and a phase MR image based on complex-valued MR image data corresponding to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signals received in response to a radio frequency (RF) and magnetic gradient pulse sequence applied to the patient during a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan; and at least one digital data processor system configured to access said memory and: assign a first color display channel to the magnitude MR image and a second color display channel to the phase MR image; and generate a composite image of the magnitude MR image and the phase MR image by assigning to respective pixels in the composite image color values based upon a combination of corresponding pixels in the assigned first and second color display channels.