A magnetic resonance (MR) system (10) includes radiofrequency (R) transmitters (34) which send RF pulses into an examination region (14) to excite a spin system to be imaged. Coil elements (20, 24, 28) pick up an MR signal, which is demodulated and converted into digital data by RF receivers (36). A plurality of independent parallel processing channels (42.sub.1, 42.sub.2, . . . , 42.sub.a) is operatively connected to the RF receivers to reconstruct images from the digital data. The parallel processing channels (42.sub.1, 42.sub.2, . . . , 42.sub.n) include one or more pipeline stages (54.sub.1, 54.sub.2, . . . , 54.sub.m). Processing channels and pipeline stages include a plurality of processing or reconstruction units (52). Processing tasks are dynamically allocated to these processing or reconstruction units on a per scan basis using a single general strategy for mapping processing tasks to hardware resources. The connections (56) between the processing or reconstruction units (52) are reconfigured using a switching means (60). In this manner, different numbers of coil elements (20, 24, 28) can be connected with matching numbers of processing channels (42.sub.1, 42.sub.2, . . . , 42.sub.n) to exploit available processing resources optimally.