Magnetic field gradient monitor and magnetic field gradient waveform correction apparatus and methods

1. A method for correcting a magnetic field gradient waveform in a magnetic resonance measurement comprising:

making a magnetic resonance measurement with a magnetic resonance system,

obtaining a step response measurement of the system,

extracting an impulse response from the measured step response,

determining the slew rate of the system during the step response measurement,

modifying a desired output waveform such that the desired output waveform is constrained to within the slew rate and the bandwidth of the system, and

determining a required pre-equalized input waveform.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the required pre-equalized waveform is determined through a deconvolution of the desired output waveform with the extracted impulse response in the time domain.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the required pre-equalized waveform is determined through division of the frequency domain representations of the desired output waveform and the extracted impulse response and further transforming the resulting data to the time domain.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising applying the pre-equalized waveform to the input of the gradient system whereby an output waveform that corresponds to the desired constrained waveform is obtained.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the magnetic resonance measurement is made using the magnetic field gradient method.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the magnetic resonance measurement is made using a magnetic field monitoring method.