Melvyn Boon King Ooi1, Sascha Krueger2, William J. Thomas3, Srirama V. Swaminathan4, Truman R. Brown1,3
1Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, USA; 2Philips Research Europe, Hamburg, Germany; 3Radiology, Columbia University, New York, USA; 4Philips Medical Systems, Cleveland, OH, USA
A prospective, intra-image compensation strategy for rigid-body motion is presented. A short tracking-sequence, interleaved into the imaging-sequence, measures the positions of three active-markers integrated into a headband worn by the subject. During head motion, the rigid-body transformation that realigns these markers is fed back to update the image-plane maintaining it at a fixed orientation relative to the head before the next segment of k-space is acquired. The complete package requires minimal additional hardware and can be flexibly incorporated into multiple imaging-sequences, promoting transferability to clinical practice. Improvements in image quality are evaluated in 3D-MPRAGE brain MRI during volunteer motion.