Patent ID: 7127092

Claim:
A method for detecting movement of a subject during a scan in which NMR image data is acquired with a magnetic resonance imaging system, the steps comprising: a) acquiring the NMR image data using a series of NMR imaging pulse sequences; b) interleaving with the series of NMR imaging pulse sequences a series of NMR navigator signal pulse sequences, each navigator signal pulse sequence including the application of three orthogonal magnetic field gradients during the readout of its NMR navigator signal such that a resulting NMR navigator signal samples a three-dimensional surface in k-space; c) acquiring the NMR navigator signals during the scan; and d) analyzing the acquired NMR navigator signals to measure rotational and translational motion of the subject during the scan; e) calculating corrective values from the measured subject rotation and subject translation; and f) correcting NMR image data using the corrective values.