1. A method of magnetic resonance imaging with reduced phase error distortion, the method comprising: (a) positioning a subject and a reference in an image region; (b) exciting magnetic resonance of magnetic dipoles of at least a portion of the subject and reference which the disposed in the image region; (c) causing a phase encode magnetic field gradient in the image region which phase encodes a magnetic resonance signal emanating from the resonating magnetic dipoles of the subject and the reference; (d) receiving the phase encoded resonance signal from the resonating magnetic dipoles in the image region; (e) rotating the received resonance signal by a phase offset; (f) transforming the phase offset rotated received signal; (g) determining a phase angle corresponding to the reference from the transformed signal; (h) comparing the determined phase angle with a selected phase angle; (i) adjusting the phase offset in accordance with the determined and selected phase angle comparisons and repeating steps (e) and (f); (j) repeating steps (b) through (i) with each of a plurality of different phase encode gradients and creating an image representation from the transformed signals.