CATHETER TRACKING USING CONTINUOUS RADIAL MRI

The guidance of minimally invasive procedures may become a very import ant future application of MRI. The guidance of interventions requires images of the anatomy as well as the information of the position of in vasive devices used. This paper introduces continuous radial MRI for t he simultaneous acquisition of the anatomic MR image and the position of one or more small RF-coils (mu-coils), which can be mounted on inva sice devices such as catheters or biopsy needles, This approach allows the in-plane tracking of an invasive device without any prolongation of the overall acquisition time, The extension to three-dimensional po sition tracking is described, Phantom studies are presented demonstrat ing the capability of this technique for real-time automatic adjustmen t of the slice position to the current catheter position with a tempor al resolution of 100 ms, Simultaneously the in-plane catheter position is depicted in the actually acquired MR image during continuous scann ing.