The invention enables to monitor a magnetic field drift of a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus on the basis of the magnetic resonance signals, which are acquired during magnetic resonance image data acquisition, such as by single shot EPI or by a gradient echo sequence. The phases of at least two magnetic resonance signals are acquired an echo time after the corresponding RF excitations. This corresponds to the central k-space line, which has frequency encoding but no phase encoding. The difference of two consecutive phase measurements, which are acquired at a certain time interval provides the shift of the resonance frequency. This enables monitoring of the shift of the resonance frequency and compensation of the magnetic field drift.