Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a clinically important medical imaging modality due to its exceptional soft-tissue contrast. MRI was invented in the early 1970s. The first commercial scanners appeared about 10 years later. Noninvasive MRI studies are now supplanting many conventional invasive procedures. A 1990 study found that the principal applications for MRI are examinations of the head (40%), spine (33%), bone and joints (17%), and the body (10%). The percentage of bone and joint studies was growing in 1990. Although typical imaging studies range from 1 to 10 min, new fast imaging techniques acquire images in less than 50 msec. MRI research involves fundamental tradeoffs between resolution, imaging time, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It also depends heavily on both gradient and receiver coil hardware innovations. In this section we provide a brief synopsis of basic nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) physics. We then derive the k-space analysis of MRI, which interprets the received signal as a scan of the Fourier transform of the image. This powerful formalism is used to analyze the most important imaging sequences. Finally, we discuss the fundamental contrast mechanisms for MRI.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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