The animal monitoring and gating system is MR-Compatible. It is designed to meet the physiological monitoring and gating needs for anesthetized mice, and rats in the MR environment.
The system is simpler to use, monitors ECG, respiration and temperature with fewer components and at a reduced cost. It is connected to a PC located near the operator console. It measures ECG using three leads with needle or surface electrodes, respiration from a small pneumatic pillow sensor and/or from the movement of one ECG lead in the strong magnetic field and temperature with a small rectal thermistor probe.
The most straightforward way to reduce cardiorespiratory artifacts is to synchronize MR data acquisition to the cardiac or respiratory cycles. The picture showed that cine of the heart of a mouse obtained using cardiac and respiratory gating.