Advancements in Contact-Free Respiration Monitoring Using RF Pick-Up Coils

Ingmar Graesslin¹, Giel Mens², Alexander Guillaume¹, Henry Stahl³, Peter Koken¹, Peter Vernickel¹, Paul Harvey², Jouke Smink², Kay Nehrke¹, Peter Boernert¹

Advanced methods of motion detection and motion artifact reduction help to improve diagnostic image quality. The use of conventional navigators requires additional planning and adversely influences the steady state, which can result in image artifacts. A new approach was presented that uses the detection of changes of RF coil loading induced by the respiratory motion of the patient. This paper describes the application of a real-time self-navigated respiration monitoring approach using dedicated RF monitoring pulses instead the RF excitations of the imaging sequence. RF amplifier drift is analyzed, and a compensation scheme is proposed to overcome this problem.