Patent ID: 9274187
Filing Date: 2016-03-01
CPC Classification: A61B,G01R,G06F

Claim Text:
1. An intervention-independent device for magnetic resonance imaging control, comprising: a plurality of markers that produce position signals corresponding to positions of members of the plurality of markers, where the position signals describe an orientation of the device, where the position signals are magnetic resonance (MR) signals from which the spatial coordinates of a member of the plurality of markers or the orientation of the device can be determined, where the position signals are sufficient to describe a desired MR scan plane, and where members of the plurality of markers comprise active markers that are responsive to excitation from the MRI magnetic field to produce the position signals; one or more transmitters that transmit the position signals to an MRI system using amplitude modulation or frequency modulation; a wireless reference recovery unit that receives the position signals; an onboard asynchronous reference source that produces a reference signal asynchronous to a synchronization signal associated with the MRI system and produces a carrier frequency to transmit the position signals; a housing that houses the plurality of markers, the one or more transmitters, and the onboard asynchronous reference source, where the housing is wearable on a hand or a wrist of an interventionist performing an MRI-aided intervention on a patient, where the housing mounts a first member of the plurality of markers distally to a proximal interphalangeal joint of a finger of the interventionist, where the housing mounts a second member of the plurality of markers distally to a proximal interphalangeal joint of the thumb of the interventionist, where the housing mounts the one or more transmitters within a threshold distance of the wrist of the interventionist, and where members of the plurality of markers are connected to members of the one or more transmitters; where the plurality of markers and the one or more transmitters operate without signal or mechanical interaction with an interventional device in use during the MRI-aided intervention on the patient; and where the desired scan plane controls the MRI system to perform a scan of the patient along the scan plane independent of a position of the interventional device.