Patent ID: 8140365

Claim:
A method of medical diagnostic imaging workflow management for controlling a medical diagnostic imaging scanner, said method comprising the steps of: accessing a template including a medical diagnostic imaging scan sequence which controls a medical diagnostic imaging scanner to perform a medical diagnostic imaging scan on a patient. the templated scan sequence including alterable and unalterable subsequences with their corresponding durations; accessing an available time span for executing said medical diagnostic imaging scan sequence template; calculating a difference between said available time span and a sum of the scan subsequence durations in said medical imaging scan template; determining an allowable duration for said medical diagnostic imaging scan sequence based on said difference; optimizing by one or more computers the medical diagnostic imaging scan sequence of said template to fit into the allowable duration by: identifying the unalterable sub-sequences within said medical diagnostic imaging scan sequence; subtracting the unalterable sub-sequence durations from the allowable duration yielding a remaining duration; automatically adjusting the duration of at least one of the alterable sub-sequence within said medical diagnostic imaging scan sequence template yielding one or more adjusted alterable sub-sequences which temporally fits into said remaining duration; combining unalterable sub-sequences with the adjusted alterable sub-sequences yielding an adjusted medical diagnostic imaging scan sequence; controlling a medical diagnostic imaging scanner with the adjusted medical diagnostic imaging scan sequence to acquire image data and reconstruct a medical diagnostic image of a patient utilizing the optimized medical diagnostics imaging scan sequence; wherein adjusting the duration of one or more of the subsequences alters one or more of spatial resolution temporal resolution, contrast, a signal to noise ratio, and artifact sensitivity of at least one of the image data acquired by the scanner and the medical diagnostic image reconstructed from acquired image data.