Patent ID: 8633690

Claim:
A method of operating a magnetic resonance imaging system comprising a plurality of subsystems including at least: a gradient coil sub-system and a shim sub-system; and a control device that operates the subsystems in coordination with each other in order to implement a data acquisition sequence and in order to acquire image data from an examination subject, said method comprising the steps of: supplying sequence control data to said control device that define a complete data acquisition sequence comprised of a plurality of respective different functional sub-sequences, each sub-sequence being associated with a respective active volume that is defined at a spatial location within the imaging system in which the respective functional sub-sequence is configured to be effective in said complete data acquisition sequence, the respective spatial locations of the active volumes for the respective different functional sub-sequences being different from each other; in addition to said sequence control data, receiving, with said control device active volume position data respectively associated with each of the different functional sub-sequences, and in said active volume position data defining, for each of said active volumes, a position, orientation and extent of the respective active volume in the imaging system; and in said control device, automatically generating respective control signals that operate each of the different subsystems in order to implement said complete data acquisition sequence, by using said sequence control data and said active volume position data, in order to locally optimize the respective different functional sub-sequences, at least with regard to a portion of the active volume associated with the respective functional sub-sequence, and making said control signals available from an output of said control device in a form that operates said subsystems in order to implement said measurement sequence.