The invention relates to a method for cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. The method comprises the steps of monitoring the ECG of a patient and detecting the occurrence of R-waves (R.sub.1, R.sub.2, R.sub.3) in the ECG, acquiring a plurality of phase encoded MR signals (a.sub.1-3, b.sub.1-3, c.sub.1-3, d.sub.1-3, e.sub.1-3) per cardiac cycle by subjecting the patient to a sequence of RF pulses and magnetic field gradient pulses, and reconstructing an MR image from at least a part of the MR signals (a.sub.1-3, b.sub.1-3, C.sub.1-3, d.sub.1-3, e.sub.1-3). For providing an improved cardiac MRI method which enables the acquisition and reconstruction of high quality MR images of the heart in cases in which the heart cycle of the examined patient changes over time or is irregular because of arrythmia, the invention proposes that the ECG of the patient is monitored continuously during acquisition of MR signals, wherein MR signals (d.sub.1 to c.sub.1, b.sub.2 to a.sub.2, c.sub.3 to b.sub.3) used for image reconstruction are retrospectively selected depending on the time interval between successive R-waves (R.sub.1, R.sub.2, R.sub.3).