Hitachi, Ltd.

Fujifilm Healthcare Corporation

Hikaru Hanada

Kenji Sakakibara

Takuya Fujikawa

Mitsushi Abe

Masahiro Takizawa

Kuniharu Oka

Miyuki Takahashi

Toru Shirai

Yoshitaka Sato

Hideta Habara

Yukio Kaneko

Yosuke Otake

Akihiro Shimada

Yasuhiro Kamada

Kohjiro Iwasawa

Masaharu Ono

Hiroki Shoji

Kosuke Hirai

Miyuki Kawamura

Kazuyuki Kato

Kosuke Ito

Naoya Sakaguchi

Hideyuki Horio

Hidehisa Akimaru

Kota Hamada

Appropriate processing is executed in a method for excluding body motion data and image reconstruction according to a type and a characteristic of a body motion, so as to reduce an influence of the body motion, and prevent deterioration of image quality caused by exclusion of data generated during the body motion. An MRI apparatus includes a processing determination unit that collects k-space data and acquires body motion information from a sensor capable of detecting not only a respiratory motion but also general body motions, analyzes the body motion information obtained by the sensor, and branches and executes processing for subsequent data collection and image reconstruction according to the analysis result. The MRI apparatus determines, based on a temporal characteristic such as a duration and a frequency, and a spatial characteristic of the body motion, particularly a generation pattern in a k-space, body motion data to be excluded, and executes image reconstruction suitable for k-space data after exclusion of the body motion data.

Magnetic resonance imaging apparatus and control method thereof

The receiving coil device includes one or a plurality of receiving coils configured to cover a head of a subject, a base portion on which the head of the subject is to be placed, a holder portion supported by the base portion, one of the receiving coils being fixed to the holder portion, a mechanism portion configured to bring the receiving coil fixed to the holder portion into close contact with a part of the head, and further, a detection unit configured to detect a physical quantity related to a displacement of the holder portion on the holder portion or the base portion. The physical quantity detected by the detection unit is sent to an MRI apparatus including the receiving coil device.

Receiving coil device and magnetic resonance imaging apparatus including the same

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 provide a static magnetic field homogeneity adjustment method capable of reducing an arrangement amount of magnetic pieces and achieving desired magnetic field homogeneity with high accuracy in magnetic field homogeneity adjustment, there is provided a static magnetic field homogeneity adjustment method in an imaging space of computing positions of a plurality of magnetic pieces separated from the imaging space through shimming computation with respect to a static magnetic field in the imaging space generated by a magnetic field generation device, and disposing the plurality of magnetic pieces at the positions obtained through the shimming computation, the method including an adjustment step of imposing restriction that a polarity of a magnetic field distribution generated in the imaging space by the magnetic pieces disposed at the positions is either positive or negative during the shimming computation, and adjusting the static magnetic field homogeneity.

Magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, static magnetic field homogeneity adjustment method, program, and computer

In the present invention, a current plane which is virtually disposed and surrounds a measurement position is assumed from magnetic field measurement values, and a current distribution (or magnetic moment distribution) which mimics a measured magnetic field is reproduced with current potentials. This is used to perform shimming calculation by a truncated singular value decomposition method with discrete shim trays that are actually used and ideal virtual continuous shim trays to carry out shimming under conditions for shimming having a uniformity that is close to ideal shimming.

Magnetic field adjusting method

The present invention provides a shimming method in which an electric current surface that is virtually placed so as to surround a measurement position is assumed from a magnetic field measurement value, in which an electric current distribution that reproduces a measurement magnetic field is reproduced through an electric current potential, and in which the reproduced magnetic field distribution is used. A magnetic moment or an electric current distribution that reproduces a magnetic field distribution obtained by a magnetic field measurement device is estimated on a predetermined closed surface, and, from the estimated magnetic moment or electric current distribution, a magnetic field distribution of an arbitrary point that exists in the closed surface is estimated. Then, on the basis of the estimated magnetic field distribution, a shim magnetic body distribution that produces a correction magnetic field for correcting the magnetic field distribution at the arbitrary point is output.

Shimming system and shimming method including a sensor unit having a pluraly of magnetic field sensors

A magnetic moment arrangement calculation method for magnetic field adjustment by combining correction of a component of a low-order mode with correction of a component of a high-order mode among the eigenmodes so as to calculate arrangement of the magnetic moment for approximately correcting the error magnetic field distribution, in which the low-order mode is an eigenmode group from the first of eigenmode numbers assigned to respective eigenmodes in the magnitude order of singular values to an eigenmode number specified by a first threshold value, in which the high-order mode is an eigenmode group with an eigenmode number more than the first threshold value, and in which a correction amount of the component of the high-order mode is smaller than a correction amount of the component of the low-order mode.

Magnetic moment arrangement calculation method for magnetic field adjustment, magnetic field adjustment device and program

Even if there is a restriction in an amount of magnetic pieces which can be disposed at each position in a shim tray, a distribution of a static magnetic field is measured so that an error magnetic field between the distribution of the static magnetic field and a target magnetic field is calculated, and respective reachable magnetic field homogeneities in a case where the magnetic pieces are disposed at one or more of the plurality of positions in the shim tray are calculated while changing the target magnetic field. The target magnetic field is selected in which an amount of magnetic pieces at each of the positions in the shim tray is equal to or less than a predetermined upper limit value, and the reachable magnetic field homogeneity is equal to or less than a predetermined value.

Magnetic field homogeneity adjustment method, magnetic field homogeneity adjustment program and magnetic field homogeneity adjustment device

In order to obtain highly accurate images with a high SNR without extending measurement time or increasing hardware costs and software processing costs, the present invention narrows a dynamic range (amplitude) of an NMR signal to be received by a reception coil (reception NMR signal) in an MRI apparatus. In order to narrow the amplitude of the reception NMR signal, according to the position of an imaging region, a peak position of the reception NMR signal is shifted from the said position in the present embodiment. The shift is achieved by applying frequency encoding gradient magnetic field pulses whose application amount in the time direction is different according to the position. This is realized by a plurality of gradient magnetic field generating systems that can be driven independently.

Magnetic resonance imaging apparatus

It is an object of the present invention to provide a technique for reducing the degradation of the image quality due to the phase difference between scanning trajectories (blades) in measurement using a non-orthogonal sampling method. Therefore, in the present invention, correction for reducing the phase difference between a plurality of scanning trajectories (blades) measured by using a non-orthogonal sampling method is performed at the time of image reconstruction. For example, the reduction of the phase difference is performed using a method of matching the phases at the intersections between blades, matching the phases of all blades at positions determined by considering the shift amount in the frequency direction, or canceling out the phase change amount of each blade obtained by calculation.

Magnetic resonance imaging apparatus and magnetic resonance imaging method

There is provided an MRI apparatus including a superconducting magnet that includes a refrigerant container and a superconducting coil, a cryogenic cooling system with which the superconducting magnet is provided, and a controller that controls the operation of the cryogenic cooling system. The cryogenic cooling system includes a cold head, a cryo-cooler, a compressor that supplies a compressed gas to the cryo-cooler, and a detection unit that detects the pressure in the refrigerant container, the refrigerant container being provided with the cold head, the cryo-cooler, the compressor, and the detection unit. An upper limit value of the maximum number of times of halts of the compressor within a predetermined period of time is set in advance. The controller intermittently halts the compressor within a range in which the pressure detected by the detection unit is equal to or lower than a predetermined upper limit value and performs control such that the number of times of halts of the compressor within the predetermined period of time reaches the upper limit value of the maximum number of times of halts.

Magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, and control apparatus of cryogenic cooling system and control method thereof

The present invention obtains high-quality images even in a case of measurement with a radial sampling method. For this purpose, pre-measurement is performed to extract only a component different for each blade from among shift amounts from among echo signals, and a shift amount in k-space of an echo signal by the said component is reflected to a reconstruction process. In the pre-measurement, echo signals are obtained respectively by applying readout gradient magnetic field pulses that change the polarity to the positive and negative and that have the same pulse shape as readout gradient magnetic field pulses to be used in an image acquisition sequence. A shift amount is obtained for each axis of X, Y, and Z of an MRI apparatus as a variation amount of a phase difference between both the echo signals.

In order to reduce errors in assessment of a structure caused by noise and remove the noise superimposed in an image without causing artificiality in the result image after the removal while retaining significant information, a similarity is calculated by comparing a reference image generated from a plurality of original images with each original image and set as an index of noise determination. The respective original images are smoothed and synthesized using the said index to acquire a final image after the noise removal.

Image processing device, magnetic resonance imaging apparatus and image processing method

In order to obtain a highly reliable image with no image distortion or no artifacts, such as ghosting, by compensating for the distortion of an output gradient magnetic field waveform caused by various factors with high accuracy, an input gradient magnetic field waveform and an output gradient magnetic field waveform corresponding to the input gradient magnetic field waveform are calculated, a response function that is a sum of response functions of a plurality of elements affecting the output gradient magnetic field waveform is calculated using the input gradient magnetic field waveform and the output gradient magnetic field waveform, an output gradient magnetic field waveform is calculated from an input gradient magnetic field waveform of a gradient magnetic field pulse set in the imaging sequence using the response function, and various kinds of correction are performed using the calculated value of the calculated output gradient magnetic field waveform.

Magnetic resonance imaging apparatus and gradient magnetic field waveform estimation method

In order to obtain a high-quality image even in multi-slice imaging in a UTE sequence that uses a half RF pulse, a refocusing pulse of the slice gradient magnetic field is adjusted and applied so that the excitation profiles of positive polarity data and negative polarity data have phase distributions that are 180 [deg] inverted with respect to each other in side lobe portions. In addition, the irradiation frequency of the half RF pulse is adjusted so as to eliminate a position shift between the intensity distributions of the positive polarity data and the negative polarity data.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Hikaru Hanada