Integrated physiological flow simulator and pulse sequence monitoring system for MRI.

A compact flow simulator for generating accurate pulsatile flow in a clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) environment has been developed and integrated with a data acquisition (DAQ) system for recording scanner system activity and physiological waveforms. The flow simulator is relatively inexpensive, easy to construct and is controlled from a standard PC. The flow simulator is robust to repeated disassembly and reassembly (normalised cross-correlation 0.97) and generates accurate pulsatile flow (normalised cross-correlation 0.94). The DAQ system was used to monitor a standard MRI pulse sequence used in MR angiography and latent delays in the scanner gating subsystem.