Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080221430 | APPARATUS FOR MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING - A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus for high-speed and high-accuracy detection of cell positions labeled with magnetic nanoparticles. A transmitter coil is controlled to generate amplitude-modulated burst RF pulses as excitation RF pulses whose amplitude is modulated by a function that repeatedly inverts the polarity of multiple high-frequency magnetic field sub-pulses separated time-wise and changes the amplitude at each polarity inversion, moreover the time interval of the amplitude-modulated burst RF pulse is set to effectively 1/(2×a first frequency), and the transmitter coil controlled so the carrier frequency of the amplitude-modulated burst RF pulse is set to a second frequency shifted substantially from the first frequency of the magnetic resonance frequency of the proton at the magnetic field strength in the MRI apparatus. The first frequency is here determined based on magnetic nanoparticle information loaded from the magnetic nanoparticle information storage unit and the magnetic resonance frequency of the proton in the static magnetic field. The MRI apparatus can in this way detect the position of cells labeled with magnetic nanoparticles, with high-speed and high accuracy. | 09-11-2008 |
20080231272 | Magnetic Resonance Imager - Provided is a magnetic resonance imager capable of efficiently suppressing artifacts in radial scanning that is short of the number of echoes. | 09-25-2008 |
20090030302 | MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING DEVICE - The magnetic resonance imaging apparatus includes a control unit for controlling a pulse sequence that applies an RF magnetic field and a magnetic field gradient to a subject placed in a static magnetic field and detects a magnetic resonance signal generated from the subject, and a calculation unit for processing the signal, and the control unit performs the process including the steps of; (1) obtaining first images at different positions in a first direction, (2) obtaining images after the first images are subjected to correction of brightness distortion, (3) obtaining images after the images as to which the brightness distortion has been corrected are further subjected to correction of positional distortion, and (4) synthesizing by a weighting calculation, overlapping areas of the images, after the positional distortion thereof has been corrected. According to this magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, the positional distortion and the brightness distortion can be corrected upon connecting the images, in the multi-station imaging. | 01-29-2009 |
20090085563 | Magnetic resonance imaging system - A magnetic resonance measurement technique is provided which shortens the measurement time while suppressing artifacts caused by body movement of a measuring object and enables high-speed imaging. An excitation pulse which excites a plurality of slice planes and an excitation pulse which excites slice planes perpendicular to the slice planes are applied and a plurality of substantially parallel linear crossing areas are simultaneously measured. Spatial information of a linear direction of the crossing areas is acquired by modulating a magnetic resonance signal from the crossing areas by a gradient magnetic field. A spatial information of a direction perpendicular to the linear direction is acquired by changing the position of the plane and an image is reconstructed. | 04-02-2009 |
20090201020 | MAGNETIC RESONANCE APPARATUS UTILIZING TIME-VARYING RATE OF MAGNETIC RESONANT FREQUENCY - The present invention provides a magnetic resonance imaging system capable of performing spectrum measurement even when a magnetic resonant frequency changes during MRS measurement. A time-varying rate of a water magnetic resonant frequency is measured in advance before the MRS measurement. The amount of change in water magnetic resonant frequency during the MRS measurement is predicted from the measured time-varying rate. With the predicted value as the reference, a transmission frequency of an RF magnetic field irradiated in a signal suppression pulse sequence, a transmission frequency of an RF magnetic field for excitation and inversion and a received frequency at the detection of a magnetic resonance signal in a sequence of the MRS measurement are respectively set. A high-precision spectrum measurement is hence enabled. | 08-13-2009 |
20090219020 | MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING APPARATUS - When a magnetic resonance signal is received more than once, while a table (transfer unit) is moved, a gradient magnetic field is applied in the table moving direction, and an application amount (intensity and application time) of the gradient magnetic field in the table moving direction is changed every acquisition of data. As for the encoding by the gradient magnetic field in the table moving direction, a series of phase encode is performed at different positions of an examination target, unlike a conventional phase encode. Therefore, the Fourier transform cannot be applied to the image reconstruction. Given this situation, a magnetization map of total FOV of the examination target is determined in such a manner that a sum of the square of an absolute value of a difference is minimized, the difference between a received signal and a signal calculated from the magnetization map set as a variable, and then, the reconstruction is performed. Even when a size of signal acquisition area in the table moving direction is narrow, the magnetic resonance imaging apparatus of the present invention is capable of taking an image of a wide field of view at high speed, by performing the imaging while the table is moved continuously. | 09-03-2009 |
20090251142 | Magnetic Resonance Imaging Apparatus - The MRI apparatus of the present invention executes a non-imaging mode | 10-08-2009 |
20100033177 | Inspection Apparatus using Magnetic Resonance and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Signal Receiver Coil - An MRI apparatus capable of selecting an optional direction as a phase encoding direction and achieving a preferable S/N, when an imaging time shortening technique is applied. A receiver coil, used as a receiver coil of a vertical magnetic field MRI apparatus, is a combination of a first coil (solenoid coil) forming a current loop around the outer circumference of a test object, second coils forming even-numbered current loops, and third coils forming odd-numbered current loops, in the direction intersecting the plane of the current loop of the first coil. The second coil and the third coil are arranged in such a manner that, as for the current loops in the array direction thereof, a position where a sensitivity of one coil is minimized approximately coincides with a position where the sensitivity of the other coil is maximized, whereby electromagnetic coupling is suppressed. | 02-11-2010 |
20100097062 | Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging Apparatus - A method for obtaining the most appropriate amplitude of signal suppression pulse, which suppresses unnecessary signals from the substance not subjected to measurement, highly accurately, swiftly and stably, and an MRI apparatus that enables the optimization are provided. | 04-22-2010 |
20100272336 | MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING APPARATUS - In the continuous moving table imaging, an image is reconstructed with suppressed artifacts even in imaging under inhomogeneity of static magnetic field. | 10-28-2010 |
20110112393 | MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING DEVICE - In the diffusion-weighted imaging, amounts of distortion and amounts of phase offset of k-space data due to a temporally changing magnetic field error induced by eddy currents and vibrations associated with application of a diffusion-weighted gradient magnetic field pulse are corrected with good precision to improve image quality. Characteristic data for correcting distortion of k-space data are calculated for every position in the slice direction as peak shifts of projections observed between the cases of applying and not applying an MPG pulse. As the characteristic data, amounts of distortion in the read-out direction and the phase encoding direction and phase offset amounts in a slice plane are calculated. | 05-12-2011 |
20110133735 | NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING APPARATUS - A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus is provided, which is capable of reducing SAR while maintaining S/N ratio and image contrast in a GrE-type pulse sequence, regardless of whether a synchronous imaging is performed or not. | 06-09-2011 |
20120093385 | MEDICAL IMAGING APPARATUS - There is provided a technique for, in a medical imaging apparatus enabling imaging of an arbitrary plane in a three-dimensional space, enabling automatic calculation of a slice position and automatic calculation of an extracting slice in MPR, without prolonging examination time. Two-dimensional scout scan similar to that used for manual setting of a slice position is performed, and the obtained scout images are processed to calculate a recommended slice position. Algorithms for the processing and various image processing procedures used for the processing are stored beforehand for every type of imaging region and every type of examination. | 04-19-2012 |
20130049753 | MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING APPARATUS - The present invention provides an image processing technique which enables various contrast control, by quantitatively handling a degree of phase enhancement in a contrast control as a post-processing of the image reconstruction. A complex operation is performed on each pixel value of a complex image obtained by an MRI, thereby generating an image with desired contrast. Intensity is controlled by increasing or decreasing the argument of the pixel value of each pixel by a constant amount, and the degree of phase enhancement is controlled by multiplying the phase (argument) of each pixel by a constant. | 02-28-2013 |
20130082708 | MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING DEVICE AND TRANSMITTING SENSITIVITY DISTRIBUTION CALCULATION METHOD - B1 distribution is calculated in a short time with a high degree of precision, and a high quality image is obtained. In the RF shimming for irradiating electromagnetic waves using an RF coil having multiple channels, the absolute values of subtraction images between multiple reconstructed images are used to calculate a transmitting sensitivity distribution which is necessary for calculating inter-channel phase difference and amplitude ratio of RF pulses provided to the respective channels. Those multiple reconstructed images are obtained by executing the imaging sequence after applying a prepulse at different flip angles respectively. Assuming an image obtained with a minimum flip angle as a reference image, for instance, the subtraction images are created between the reference image and the other respective images. It is also possible that multiple subtraction images being obtained are divided by one another, and the transmitting sensitivity distribution is created on the basis of the division result. | 04-04-2013 |
20130214785 | MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING DEVICE - Images of two or more kinds of substances showing different chemical shifts, such as water image and metabolite image, are obtained without extending measurement time. For example, images of two or more kinds of desired substances showing different chemical shifts, such as water image and metabolite image, are obtained by one time of execution of an imaging sequence. In this execution, a pre-pulse is applied so that signals of the substances to be separated shift on the image, and magnetic resonance signals are received with receiver RF coils in a number not smaller than the number of types of the substances to be separated. An image reconstructed from the magnetic resonance signals is separated into images of the individual substances using sensitivity maps of the receiver RF coils. Then, correction is performed for returning the shifted image to the original position. Further, residual signals induced by errors generated in the measurement and the separation processing are eliminated by using spectroscopic images obtained after the separation. | 08-22-2013 |