Fundamentals of MRI

Outline relevant historical events leading up to the invention of magnetic resonance imaging. Explain the key contributions of Bloch, Purcell, Larmor, Faraday, Lauterbur, and Damadian to the field of MRI. Briefly describe how MRI works, and state its advantages over alternate imaging modalities.

Understand atomic structure and how this contributes to image formation. Explain magnetic moments, precession, net magnetization vectors, and the Law of Electromagnetism. State the Larmor Equation, and understand how to use it and its importance to MRI. Explain resonance, excitation, and the role of radio frequency and flip angles. Understand the basics of how an MRI signal is produced, and the role of free induction decay, relaxation, T1 recovery, and T2 decay. Define a pulse sequence, TR, and

Define signal to noise ratio (SNR), contrast to noise ratio (CNR), and spatial resolution (SR). Understand which parameters influence SNR, CNR, resolution, and scan time. Define voxel, saturation band, chemical pre-saturation, partial voluming, rectangular field of view, isotropic, and anisotropic. Understand that for every parameter manipulation there are trade-offs, and be able to explain what the trade-offs are for each parameter as well as its effects (advantages and disadvantages).