Hitachi, Ltd.

Fujifilm Healthcare Corporation

Hideyuki Horio

Hikaru Hanada

Kota Hamada

An imaging target site of a subject can be automatically aligned with imaging space, without using additional hardware. A nuclear magnetic resonance signal received by a receiver coil arranged at the imaging target site of the subject is used to calculate a position of the receiver coil. A table on which the subject is placed is moved in a manner to align the position of the receiver coil with the imaging space of the magnetic resonance imaging apparatus. With this configuration, the imaging target site of the subject can be aligned with the imaging space of the magnetic resonance imaging apparatus.

Magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, subject positioning device, and subject positioning method

In order to obtain high-quality images easily with high flexibility for imaging conditions and apparatus configuration changes in an MRI apparatus using a multi-element coil, an output pattern identifying a synthesizing mode of the respective reception signals received by the respective elements comprising a reception coil is determined according to imaging conditions in the present invention. The determination is performed so that, for example, at least one of a covering rate of an imaging range, an S/N ratio of the final image, and element utilization efficiency becomes the best. The output pattern is comprised of information identifying one or more elements that use reception signals and a synthetic pattern synthesizing the reception signals among the elements to be used. The synthetic pattern, for example, is selected in advance from among a plurality of synthetic pattern candidates to be stored according to a synthesizing method.

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Tokyo, Japan

Hideyuki Horio