A computer implemented method of treatment targeting includes receiving magnetic resonance (MR) images of a subject including a target region, generating at least one contour of at least one surrogate element apart from the target region in the MR images, and determining a location of the target region in each of the MR images based on a location of the at least one contour in the MR images.

Systems and methods for late gadolinium enhancement (“LGE”) tissue viability imaging in a dynamic (e.g., temporally-resolved) manner using magnetic resonance imaging (“MRI”) are provided. Dynamic LGE images can be generated throughout the entire cardiac cycle at high temporal resolution in a single breath-hold. Dynamic, semi-quantitative longitudinal relaxation maps are acquired and retrospective synthetization of dynamic LGE images is implemented using those semi-quantitative longitudinal relaxation maps.

In a method for diffusion-weighted MR-imaging of an object, which undergoes a cyclic motion, a first sub-period type of the cyclic motion is predicted for a first acquisition timeframe, where the first sub-period type corresponds to one of two or more predefined characteristic types of sub-periods of the cyclic motion. A first amount of diffusion-weighting may be selected based on the first sub-period type. A first MR-acquisition may be carried out during the first acquisition timeframe, where a diffusion-weighting according to the first amount of diffusion-weighting is applied. An MR-image of the object is generated based on MR-data including a first MR-dataset obtained as a result of the first MR-acquisition.

It is an object of the invention to provide a radio frequency (RF) transmit—receive coil (1) for a magnetic resonance (MR) imaging system with an integrated vital signs detector (3) for the detection of vital signs of a patient within the magnetic resonance (MR) imaging system, whereby contact sensors directly attached to the body of the patient, are replaced by a contactless system for monitoring vital signs, which makes it much easier to measure vital signs of the patient. The object is achieved by a RF transmit-receive coil (1) comprising a vital signs detector (3) wherein the vital signs detector (3) is integrated in the RF transmit-receive coil (1), wherein a pair of electrically conducting coil elements (4) of the RF transmit-receive coil (1) forms the vital signs detector (3), wherein the vital signs detector (3) is a capacitive vital signs detector (3), the capacitive vital signs detector (3) being adapted for receiving capacitive vital signs signals. The present invention also concerns a system for the detection of vital signs of a patient within a magnetic resonance (MR) imaging system, a method for operating the system for the detection of vital signs of a patient within a magnetic resonance (MR) imaging system, a software package for a magnetic resonance (MR) imaging system and a software package for upgrading a magnetic resonance (MR) imaging system.

A computer-implemented method of reconstructing a motion-compensated magnetic resonance image uses raw k-space data acquired at a first resolution over successive respiratory and/or cardiac cycles of a patient. After binning data based on corresponding motion states derived from these cycles, the resolution of the binned K-space data in each bin is reduced. This is done by selecting a sub-group of binned k-space data. Bin images are reconstructed from the reduced-resolution data, and histogram-equalised versions of the reconstructed reduced-resolution bin image generated for each bin. Motion fields are estimated and interpolated to the first resolution such that motion data can be incorporated into a final reconstruction of a motion compensated image.

The present disclosure provides a system for patient monitoring. The system may cause a medical device to perform a treatment or a scan on a patient who remains in a breath-hold status. During the treatment or the scan of the patient, the system may acquire one or more parameter values relating to one or more status parameters that reflect the breath-hold status of the patient using a monitoring device. The system may also predict a breaking point of the breath-hold status based on the one or more parameter value. The system may further adjust the treatment or the scan based on the breaking point of the breath-hold status.

A magnetic resonance tomography unit and a method is provided in which a patient couch may be moved in relation to the longitudinal direction into the patient tunnel in the transversal direction into a left-hand side extreme position and an opposite-lying right-hand side extreme position. Using an image acquisition facility in the left-hand side extreme position a right-hand side part is acquired and in the right-hand side extreme position a left-hand side part of the outer contour of the predetermined object is acquired. Using the image acquisition facility, the outer contour of the object is subsequently created from the left-hand side part of the outer contour and also from the right-hand side part of the outer contour.

The disclosure facilitates determining patient motion during a magnetic resonance protocol. According to some examples, the patient motion may be corrected or compensated.

A breathing guidance system is provided for guiding the breathing of a user during a magnetic resonance imaging procedure. A target breathing rate is determined for the user which is in synchronism with the sounds, such as clicking sounds, generated by the MRI scanner. In this way, an improved signal to noise ratio is obtained for the scanned image by controlling the breathing of the user to be regular.

A method includes determining a heart beat signal during acquisition of MR images obtained at a plurality of cardiac cycles; determining at least one physiological parameter of a heart obtained at the plurality of cardiac cycles; determining a model including, determining, in each of the cardiac cycles, a variable time interval of variable duration and at least one additional time interval based on the heart beat signal and the at least one physiological parameter, the at least one additional time interval having a lower variability in duration than the variable time interval; determining a duration of the variable time interval and a duration of the cardiac cycle for each of the cardiac cycles based on the heart beat signal and the at least one physiological parameter; and assigning the MR images to the different cardiac phases based on the variable time interval and each of the cardiac cycles.