Background An important requirement for successful cardiac MRI is accurate gating. However, obtaining proper Electrocardiogram (ECG) gating inside the MRI is a difficult problem, due to the Magneto-Hydro-Dynamic (MHD) effect, resulting in frequent intermittent gating. The MHD effect generates a voltage due to conductive blood flow perpendicular to B0, and distorts the real ECG. Intermittent gating also occurs when arrhythmia patients incur several events of arrhythmia between their sinus rhythm (SR) beats, resulting in blurred images. We hypothesized that a novel real-time 3-D gating method could accurately detect the QRS complex, even in difficult cases, such as with Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVCS), non-stable heart rate (atrial fibrillation, exercise), imaged at both 1.5 and 3T MRIs.