1. A method for producing a series of cardiac gated magnetic resonance images of a subject's heart, the steps comprising: a) administering a contrast agent to the subject; b) producing a gating signal that indicates the start of the subject's cardiac cycle; c) producing an RF inversion pulse that inverts spin magnetization throughout a field of view a preset time after a gating signal is produced; d) acquiring a series of MR data segments at successive cardiac phases after the RF inversion pulse is produced using a plurality of steady-state free precession pulse sequences (SSFP); e) repeating steps b) through d) until sufficient k-space data is acquired by the SSFP pulse sequences in each segment from which an image frame can be reconstructed for each segment; and f) reconstructing a series of image frames depicting the heart at a succession of cardiac phases using the k-space data acquired in the series of segments.