Patent ID: 8855742

Claim:
A method for simultaneous imaging and tracking, comprising: receiving a designated signal and one or more characteristics corresponding to a plurality of imaging gradient waveforms; synchronizing a tracking pulse sequence with an imaging pulse sequence at a determined point in the imaging pulse sequence based on the designated signal; applying the tracking pulse sequence simultaneously with the imaging pulse sequence for acquiring corresponding response signals from an interventional device, wherein the interventional device comprises at least one tracking coil and a tracking source configured to generate the response signals at a tracking resonant frequency different from an imaging resonant frequency; determining a location of the at least one tracking coil within or outside a body of a subject based on the response signals received from the tracking source and the one or more characteristics corresponding to the imaging gradient waveforms, wherein determining the location of the at least one tracking coil comprises: determining positional offsets of the at least one tracking coil along slice and readout directions of the plurality of imaging gradient waveforms; determining a positional offset of the at least one tracking coil along an oblique direction representative of a combination of readout and phase-encoding directions of the plurality imaging waveforms; and determining an intersection of the positional offsets along the slice, readout and oblique directions.