Maarten J. Versluis1,2, Andrew G. Webb1,2,
Peter Boernert2,3, Mark A. van Buchem1, Matthias J. P.
van Osch1,2
1Radiology, Leiden University
Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands; 2C.J. Gorter Center for High
Field MRI, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands; 3Philips
Research Europe, Hamburg, Germany
Strongly T2*-weighted sequences are very sensitive to variations in the magnetic field due to, for example, respiration and body movements. This effect is more apparent at high magnetic field strengths (7 Tesla). Using navigator echoes it is possible to estimate and correct for global field changes. In this work we have improved this method by including the sensitivities of the different coil elements in the receive array to estimate the local field variations. Including the spatial encoding along the read out axis of the navigators yielded the best results.