Patent ID: 7598737

Claim:
A method for determining a position of a local coil on a bed within a magnetic resonance scanner that is movable relative to the magnetic resonance scanner, said magnetic resonance scanner also comprising a processor, said method comprising the steps of: placing a local coil at a position on the patient bed, said position initially being unknown to the processor of the magnetic resonance scanner; moving said bed together with said local thereon through a plurality of positions relative to said scanner; at each of said plurality of positions, exciting nuclear spins in an examination subject on the bed using a transmitting antenna other than said local coil to cause magnetic resonant signals to be generated in the subject, and also at each of said plurality of positions, detecting said magnetic resonance signals with said local coil to obtain respective magnetic resonance measurement signals; in said processor, extracting a signal intensity value for said local coil from said magnetic resonance measurement signals and determining a dependency of the extracted signal intensity values on the respective positions of the bed relative to the scanner; and in said processor, from the determined dependency, identifying a position, in at least one spatial direction, of the local coil on the bed and generating a signal, in a form selected from the group consisting of a stored signal and a signal emitted from the processor, representing said position in a form suitable for use in image acquisition or image reconstruction.