in a method for acquisition of movement of a subject by magnetic resonance imaging , a pulse sequence is applied that spatially modulates the magnetization of the subject in one spatial direction , a spectral maximum of the image data in the fourier domain representing the spatially - modulated subject is acquired by a three - dimensional imaging sequence with volume excitation of the nuclear spins , the acquired spectral maximum is fourier transformed , and the movement of the subject is determined from the fourier - transformed signal .