Figure 2

Aortic flow 64 ml/beat measured from Figure 1. The background in the aortic region was measured in the phantom, as in Figure 1d. The aortic flow curve includes 8.4 ml/beat due to the background offset of 1.6 cm/s in the aortic region. The true aortic flow is 56 ml/beat. The relative error in the calculated flow measurement is therefore 15%. Although the example in Figure 1 may be relatively easy to correct by correcting phase offset errors of signal across the relatively large regions of static chest wall and liver, correction is not always as straightforward in clinical acquisitions. Without such an independent correction of the background offset, it would be difficult to correct the aortic flow curve by using physiological assumptions such as negligible flow in diastole.