MRI Physics for Radiologists

When this book was initially published three years ago, it was my goal to delineate the principles of magnetic resonance imaging in a format that could be understood without a sophisticated physics or mathematics back- ground. That is still my goal. However, in the interim, it has become clear to me that many magnetic resonance techniques that we now routinely use are inadequately understood by many of us. Therefore, I have re-structured and expanded the book in the following way. There are now three main sections: of the sections one and two deal with the contrast and spatial characteristics image, as they did in the original text; and an additional section deals with various peripheral but significant magnetic resonance topics. Sections one and two still provide the 'meat' of the material through the guise of the spin-echo pulse sequence; but section three goes beyond by explaining other pulse cycles and devices that are commonly used in today's imaging centers. To begin with, since fast scanning has now become a widely used tech- nique, that chapter has been significantly expanded, and now includes a complete but non-mathematical explanation of what a gradient echo is and how fast scan images differ in principle from spin-echo images. Also, the applications of 3DFT and 'half-Fourier' imaging are graphically covered without mathematical intervention.