Patent ID: 7279901

Claim:
A method for generating a homogenous radio frequency field in a three-dimensional examination volume of a magnetic resonance system, said magnetic resonance system comprising a radio frequency body coil comprised of a plurality of resonator segments, and a control and evaluation device connected to the body coil for separately activating respective resonators of said body coil electromagnetically decoupled from each other, said resonators being selected from the group consisting of individual resonator segments and groups of said resonator segments, comprising the steps of: exciting N resonators of said body coil, with an examination subject disposed in said examination volume, to generate N linearly independent radio frequency field distributions in said examination volume using defined excitation parameters, each of said N field distributions being produced by one of the N excited resonators and, with said body coil, acquiring the respective radio frequency field distributions arising from said excitation in said examination volume; computationally superimposing the acquired radio frequency field distributions in said control and evaluation device and determining therein an overall field distribution in said examination volume, said overall field distribution having a homogeneity associated therewith; in said control and evaluation device, computationally evaluating the homogeneity of said overall field distribution using an evaluation algorithm, and determining a change of at least one of said defined excitation parameters for at least one of said resonators to compensate for a known inhomogeneity of said overall radio frequency field; and modifying said defined excitation parameters dependent on said parameter change and exciting said N resonators, with said examination subject in said examination volume, with the modified excitation parameters to acquire diagnostic magnetic resonance data from said examination subject making said diagnostic magnetic resonance data available in a form allowing reconstruction of an image.