Phase Based Navigator Echo Analysis with a Virtual Large Loop RF Coil

Yuji Iwadate¹, Kenichi Kanda², Akira Nabetani¹, Tetsuji Tsukamoto¹

Phase based navigator echo analysis is useful in navigator gated imaging but sometimes affected by an inhomogeneous sensitivity of a receiver RF coil. We propose a method that uses virtual large loop coil to obtain a homogeneous phase background. By adding two navigator data sets vectorially, sensitivity of the virtual large loop coil had a homogeneous phase, which resulted in accurate motion detection with phase based navigator echo analysis. Future work will involve the phase compensation to apply to a larger number of coil elements of phased arrays.