Patent ID: 7693569

Claim:
A magnetic resonance (MR) imaging apparatus comprising: an MR imaging system having a plurality of gradient coils positioned about a bore of a magnet to impress a polarizing magnetic field and an RF transceiver system and an RF switch controlled by a pulse module to transmit RF signals to an RF coil assembly to acquire MR images; and a computer programmed to: sample non-spatially-encoded MR data of a central region of k-space from a region-of-interest (ROI) using any given k-space trajectory, wherein the non-spatially-encoded MR data is sampled during a repetition time interval of a pulse sequence; sample spatially-encoded MR data from the ROI during the repetition time interval, wherein the spatially-encoded MR data comprises MR imaging data; sample additional non-spatially-encoded MR data of the central region of k-space from the ROI; and determine motion in the ROI based on MR motion data comprising the non-spatially-encoded MR data and the additional non-spatially-encoded MR data, wherein the MR motion data is free of MR imaging data.