Patent ID: 8489174

Claim:
A method to detect signal data corresponding to a breathing movement of an examination subject by magnetic resonance (MR), comprising the steps of: a) loading a first data set and second data set into a computerized processor, said first and second data sets respectively being based on complex k-space data acquired with a navigator sequence from a common excitation volume of an examination subject in a magnetic resonance data acquisition unit; b) processing the first and second data sets in said processor to obtain a processing result related to the breathing movement at the acquisition time of at least one of said first and second data sets, said processing comprising a transformation of said first and said second data set in spatial space and calculating a phase difference between at least one complex data point of the first data set and a complex data point of the second data set which is associated with the same spatial position as said data point of the first data set; c) electronically storing the processing result from step b) together with a time value that depends on at least one of a point in time of acquisition of the k-space data on which the first data set is based and a point in time of acquisition of the k-space data on which the second data is based; and d) repeating steps a) through c) until a series of processing results has been stored that maps a breathing movement of interest and, in each repetition acquiring at least either the first or second data set loaded in step a) at a different point in time than the first and second data set loaded in previous repetition of step a).