1. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus comprising: an assembly of MRI gantry components including static and gradient magnetic field generators and at least one radio frequency (RF) coil coupled to an imaging volume; and at least one MRI system control computer and associated program memory coupled to control said gantry components to acquire correction data to be used to correct an influence of a respiratory body motion on image data in synchronization with a signal representing the respiratory body motion, the correction data being two-dimensional image data in an X-axis and a Y-axis direction, and the correction data being obtained by applying both readout gradients and phase encode gradients; subsequently acquire imaging data; and generate corrected image data by correcting for influence of the respiratory body motion based on a position shift in each of the X-axis and Y-axis directions in the correction data.