PurposeTo develop a general framework for parallel imaging (PI) with the use of Maxwell regularization for the estimation of the sensitivity maps (SMs) and constrained optimization for the parameter‐free image reconstruction.Theory and MethodsCertain characteristics of both the SMs and the images are routinely used to regularize the otherwise ill‐posed optimization‐based joint reconstruction from highly accelerated PI data. In this paper, we rely on a fundamental property of SMs—they are solutions of Maxwell equations—we construct the subspace of all possible SM distributions supported in a given field‐of‐view, and we promote solutions of SMs that belong in this subspace. In addition, we propose a constrained optimization scheme for the image reconstruction, as a second step, once an accurate estimation of the SMs is available. The resulting method, dubbed Maxwell parallel imaging (MPI), works for both 2D and 3D, with Cartesian and radial trajectories, and minimal calibration signals.ResultsThe effectiveness of MPI is illustrated for various undersampling schemes, including radial, variable‐density Poisson‐disc, and Cartesian, and is compared against the state‐of‐the‐art PI methods. Finally, we include some numerical experiments that demonstrate the memory footprint reduction of the constructed Maxwell basis with the help of tensor decomposition, thus allowing the use of MPI for full 3D image reconstructions.ConclusionThe MPI framework provides a physics‐inspired optimization method for the accurate and efficient image reconstruction from arbitrary accelerated scans.