A method and apparatus for magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of a moving object, wherein motion data are acquired about movement of the object in multiple dimensions during a "pre-scan" of the object, prior to the acquisition of image data during a succeeding "imaging scan" of the object. Because motions of the object in one dimension are to some degree correlated with object motions in other dimensions, in accordance with the invention, the pre-scan multi-dimensional motion data are used to develop algorithms that relate the motion data of the object in a first dimension to the motion data of the object in a second or third dimension. Thus, during the subsequent acquisition of the image data during the imaging scan, it is only necessary to measure the object motion in one dimension, which measured data are then used in order to estimate object movement in the other one or two dimensions using the algorithms developed from the pre-scan motion data. The measured and/or estimated motion data are then used to adjust the image data or image plane, so as to reduce (or even prevent) image distortion due to object motion.