Patent ID: 8577443

Claim:
A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus comprising: a preparation scan unit configured to acquire signal values of a blood flow while changing delay times from an R wave in synchronization with an electrocardiogram; a graph generating unit configured to generate a graph which shows a relation between the signal values of the blood flow acquired by the preparation scan unit and the delay times; a display unit configured to display the generated graph; a determining unit configured to determine cardiac phases between systole and diastole in which blood flow signal intensity varies by referring to the displayed graph; a three-dimensional image data acquisition unit configured to acquire three or more echo data sets respectively corresponding to the determined cardiac phases and to generate three or more three-dimensional image data sets respectively corresponding to the determined cardiac phases by image reconstruction processing; a subtraction processing unit configured to generate two or more three-dimensional time-series blood flow image data sets by performing subtraction processing between a reference image data set selected from the generated three-dimensional image data sets and each of the generated three-dimensional image data sets other than the reference image data set or between two of the generated three-dimensional image data sets at near cardiac phases; a projection unit configured to generate two or more projection image time-series data sets by performing projection processing to the three-dimensional blood flow age data sets; and an interface unit configured to set an image processing condition with an operation of an input device through a window displayed on a monitor so as to make at least one of the subtraction processing and the projection processing automatically performed after acquisition of the echo data sets.