Without injecting a contrast medium, blood pumped out from the heart can
preferably be depicted in a non-invasive fashion, resulting in a greatly
shortened scanning time for data acquisition. An MRI system temporal phase
detector acquires an ECG signal of an object, and an imaging scanner
performs a three-dimensional scanning pulse sequence every slice encoding
in synchronism with an ECG signal. The pulse sequence includes an RF
excitation pulse for which a repetition time is set to be shorter than
conventional. In addition, the pulse sequence includes a slice-directional
gradient for performing data acquisition based on the slice encoding in an
approximately parallel direction to a running direction of blood flow.
Furthermore, the pulse sequence includes a phase-encoding directional
gradient for applying phase encoding in a direction approximately
coinciding with a running direction of the blood flow.
