Patent ID: 7653426

Claim:
A method in a magnetic resonance (MR) imaging apparatus, said method comprising: providing at least one peculiar index, which can be discriminated from other portions on art MR image, at the tip of a catheter; previously inserting a metal guide wire for guiding the catheter into a body cavity of a patient into which the catheter is inserted; executing, by said magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, an MR imaging sequence of a plurality of sliced images intersecting the guide wire while inserting the catheter into the body cavity along the guide wire; receiving the nuclear magnetic resonance signals, which are generated from the patient when the sequence is executed, by using the guide wire as antenna means to receive said nuclear magnetic resonance signals; reconstructing, by said magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, three-dimensional image data using the nuclear magnetic resonance signals; determining the tip position and the insetting direction of the catheter by detecting the peculiar index provided at the tip of the catheter based on any one of the three-dimensional image data and image data imaged by an MR imaging method different from that of the three-dimensional image data; setting the tip position and the inserting direction of the catheter as a view point and a line-of-sight direction, respectively; acquiring, by said magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, three-dimensional image data at a plurality of sliced positions set forward of the tip of the catheter; and reconstructing, by said magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, a center projected image being observed from the view point by projecting the three-dimensional image data acquired at the sliced positions set forward of the tip of the catheter along a line-of-sight direction to a projection plane and displaying the center projected image on a display means.