Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080221429 | Magnetic resonance imaging of coronary venous structures - A method and system for magnetic resonance imaging comprises applying at least one radiofrequency magnetization transfer (MT) pulse to a coronary venous region of a subject positioned within a magnetic field, and acquiring magnetic resonance imaging data from the coronary venous region to produce an image of a coronary venous structure. This technique can be utilized as part of a 3D free-breathing, ECG-triggered gradient-echo Cartesian acquisition of the coronary region. One or more magnetization transfer (MT) preparation pulses are used to enhance the contrast between venous blood and myocardium. The MT preparation results in myocardial signal suppression without any significant signal loss in the arterial or venous blood so as to maintain venous blood signal-to-noise ratio while improving contrast between myocardium and veins. The coronary venous structure can comprise one or more of a coronary sinus, a lateral vein and a posterior vein. The image of a coronary venous structure can be acquired in connection with an interventional cardiovascular procedure, such as a cardiac resynchronization therapy. | 09-11-2008 |
20100060277 | METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR NON-CONTRAST ENHANCED PULMONARY MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING - In one aspect, a method of inducing nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signals from a region of an object having at least a portion of at least one pulmonary vein using at least one coil adapted to emit electromagnetic signals to induce an NMR effect is provided. The method comprises operating the at least one coil to provide at least one imaging sequence at an effective off-resonance frequency adapted to cause NMR signals to be emitted from the at least one pulmonary vein, and detecting at least some of the NMR signals to obtain NMR data corresponding to the at least one pulmonary vein. | 03-11-2010 |
20110028829 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR NON-CONTRAST ENHANCED PULMONARY VEIN MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING - A system and method for non-contrast enhanced pulmonary vein magnetic resonance imaging substantially suppresses the signal from cardiac tissue adjacent to the left atrium and pulmonary vein is provided. Significant conspicuity of the left atrium and pulmonary vein versus adjacent anatomical structures is produced. In this manner, more accurate measurements of pulmonary vein ostia size are facilitated, as well as more accurate registration of imaging volumes with a radiofrequency ablation catheter during pulmonary vein isolation procedures. In addition, more robust three-dimensional volume views of the left atrium and pulmonary vein are produced without the administration of contrast agents. | 02-03-2011 |
20110175609 | Method for Motion Correction in Magnetic Resonance Imaging Using Radio Frequency Coil Arrays - A method for motion correction using coil arrays, termed “MOCCA,” is provided, in which coil-dependent motion-related signal variations are employed to determine information related to motion in two and three directions. With such a method, navigator echoes are not required, nor is the acquisition of additional data required to resolve complex motions in more than one direction. The motion estimation and compensation method provided by MOCCA is also applicable to applications of cardiac, respiratory, and other physiological self-gating techniques. | 07-21-2011 |
20120099774 | Method For Image Reconstruction Using Low-Dimensional-Structure Self-Learning and Thresholding - A method for reconstructing an image of a subject from undersampled image data that is acquired with an imaging system, such as a magnetic resonance imaging system or computed tomography system, is provided. From the acquired undersampled image data, an image of the subject is reconstructed and used to guide further image reconstruction. For example, a low resolution image is reconstructed from a portion of the undersampled image data, such as from a portion corresponding to the center of k-space when MRI is used. From this image, a number of similarity clusters are produced and processed. The processing may be by hard thresholding, Wiener filtering, principal component pursuit, or other similar techniques. These processed similarity clusters are then used to reconstruct a final, target image of the subject using, for example, a weighted average combination of the similarity clusters. | 04-26-2012 |
20130187652 | Method for Motion Correction in Magnetic Resonance Imaging Using Radio Frequency Coil Arrays - A method for motion correction using coil arrays, termed “MOCCA,” is provided, in which coil-dependent motion-related signal variations are employed to determine information related to motion in two and three directions. With such a method, navigator echoes are not required, nor is the acquisition of additional data required to resolve complex motions in more than one direction. The motion estimation and compensation method provided by MOCCA is also applicable to applications of cardiac, respiratory, and other physiological self-gating techniques. | 07-25-2013 |
20130197347 | Method for Free-Breathing Magnetic Resonance Imaging Using Iterative Image-Based Respiratory Motion Correction - A method for free-breathing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using iterative image-based respiratory motion correction is provided. An MRI system is used to acquired k-space data and navigator data from a subject. The k-space data is then sorted into a plurality of data bins using the navigator data. A motion correction parameter is estimated for each data bin and is applied to the respective k-space data in that bin. The corrected k-space data segments are then combined to form a corrected k-space data set, from which an image is reconstructed. The process may be iteratively repeated until an image quality metric is optimized; for example, until an image sharpness measure is sufficiently maximized. | 08-01-2013 |
20130211234 | System and Method For Magnetic Resonance Imaging With an Adaptive Gating Window Having Constant Gating Efficiency - A system and method for producing an image of a subject with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system using an adaptive gating window with constant gating efficiency is provided. Navigator data is acquired from the subject and used to produce a gating window having a defined gating efficiency value. Image data is acquired with the MRI system while measuring a position of an anatomical location within the subject. Image data is accepted or rejected based on whether the measured anatomical location is within the gating window. The gating window is updated using the measured position of the anatomical location such that a substantially constant gating efficiency value is maintained. Imaging is repeated with the updated gating window, after which the gating window is again updated. When the desired amount of image data has been acquired, an image of the subject is reconstructed. | 08-15-2013 |
20140056496 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ACCELERATED PHASE CONTRAST MAGNETIC RESONANCE ANGIOGRAPHY AND BLOOD FLOW IMAGING - An apparatus and method process magnetic resonance image (MRI) data and other data from a subject, including image data corresponding to at least one of angiographic data, four-dimensional blood flow, neurological blood flow, abdominal blood flow, and peripheral blood flow in the subject, and applies a compressed sensing (CS) reconstruction method utilizing a complex difference of the image data as a sparsifying transform for imaging of at least one of blood flow and magnetic resonance angiography to output a reconstructed image of the blood flow and magnetic resonance angiography, in the subject with increased processing speed and having high accuracy. The apparatus receives the MRI data of the fluid flow from an MRI device. The processor operates predetermined software, receives the MRI data, and applies the CS reconstruction method to generate the reconstructed image. An output device outputs the reconstructed image of the fluid flow. | 02-27-2014 |
20140079305 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IMAGE ENHANCEMENT IN MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING USING MOTION CORRUPTED DATA - An apparatus and method process image data, including motion corrupted data, from a magnetic resonance imaging procedure to obtain and reconstruct images for cardiac, cardiovascular, coronary arterial, and/or pulmonary vein diagnoses in a subject. The apparatus and method include a processor operating predetermined software which receives the image data, classifies the received image data as accepted image data or rejected image data, and applies a predetermined relationship between the accepted image data and the rejected image data to correct for motion of the subject and to generate and output a reconstructed image of the subject corrected for the motion from the image data, with the reconstructed image having a relatively high signal-to-noise ratio. | 03-20-2014 |
20140159724 | IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS, K-SPACE GENERATION METHOD, MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGE APPARATUS, AND CONTROL METHOD OF MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGE APPARATUS - A magnetic resonance (MR) image processing system includes a data collection unit that acquires image data from a target region of an object. A navigator unit acquires a motion signal indicating motion comprising motion of at least a portion of an object. A data processing unit derives k-space data for a k-space data array from the acquired image data, by acquiring k-space data for a first portion of the k-space from the acquired image data in response to the motion signal indicating motion is within a predetermined range and acquiring k-space data for a second portion of the k-space from the acquired image data irrespective of the predetermined range. | 06-12-2014 |