Patent Document ID: 20120177270
Application ID: 13335080
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system comprising: a magnet system configured to generate a polarizing magnetic field about at least a portion of a phantom arranged in the MRI system, the phantom including a known structure and a slice of the known structure including a plurality of geometric shapes arranged in a predefined pattern; a plurality of gradient coils configured to apply a gradient field to the polarizing magnetic field; a radio frequency (RF) system configured to apply an excitation field to the phantom and acquire MR image data therefrom; and a computer programmed to: reconstruct an image of the phantom from the MR image data; identify a plurality of seed pixels in the image of the phantom using a fuzzy shape recognition algorithm; rank combinations of the seed pixels using a fuzzy pattern recognition algorithm using a priori information about the predefined pattern; and rank the combinations of the seed pixels to generate an indication of an imaging quality characteristic of the MRI system.