MR software tools for real-time decision making and FOV prescription

Motivation: Many cutting-edge MR neuroimaging paradigms require real-time decision making and precise FOV positioning. We present two software tools to support such paradigms. Goal(s): Develop two modules. 1) vSend: opens a socket and sends imaging data to another computer in a vendor-agnostic format, enabling real-time analysis. 2) AAhijack: reads a matrix from a socket and overwrites the Siemens AutoAlign matrix, enabling online slice prescription. Approach: Modules are implemented as Siemens image reconstruction modules (ICE functors) in C++ and two slice prescription systems utilizing the modules are demonstrated. Results: The slice prescription systems have comparable performance and various advantages and disadvantages. Impact: The software tools presented have enabled a variety of cutting-edge MR neuroimaging paradigms including real-time fMRI, motion tracker calibration, real-time shimming, fetal head-pose detection and automated FOV prescription, reacquisition planning and single-slice BOLD imaging FOV prescription.