SELF-ADAPTIVE TRACKING AND PHASE ENCODING DURING DATA COLLECTION FOR CONTRAST-ENHANCED MRA

摘要

A magnetic resonance imaging system (30) and method monitors signal intensity to detect or predict a peak contrast agent concentration in a region to be imaged. Reference images (58, 64) without a contrast agent and simulating the presence of a contrast agent provide a correlation between k-space signal intensity and contrast agent concentration. A peak contrast agent concentration is detected by comparing a received k-space signal intensity with frequency domain spectra calculated on the basis of the reference images (58, 64). When the monitored signal intensity of the acquired k-space data (54) indicates a peak contrast agent concentration in the imaged region, a sequence controller (46) automatically adjusts the phase encoding so that k-space data with zero or central phase encoding is immediately acquired.