MRI rapid review

MRI offers superior soft tissue discrimination, visualizing brain structures, pituitary gland, and spinal cord, using hydrogen in a 1.5 tesla field with proton alignment.

Explore wave properties—crest, trough, amplitude, and wavelength—and how frequency relates to wave speed, then learn how hydrogen protons in a magnetic field produce Larmor frequency for MRI.

Learn how a radiofrequency pulse excites protons to transverse magnetization with a flip angle, and how T1 and T2 relaxation shape the MRI signal.

Gradient coils in MRI generate x, y, and z gradient fields to encode signals through slice encoding and frequency encoding, enabling localization of protons and image formation.

Learn how k-space filling uses gradient frequencies, phase encoding, and readout to form MRI images, and how multi-slice sampling reduces scan time by leveraging TR, TE, and magnetization recovery.

Explains MRI sequence parameters, including spin-echo and inversion-recovery sequences, flip angles, TR/TE, inversion time, and how NEX, matrix, field of view, slice thickness, and FLAIR affect contrast.

Explore common MRI artifacts such as chemical shift, zipper, paramagnetic, spike, clipping, susceptibility, surface-wrapped, and frequency artifacts and their imaging impact.

Explore MRI design by comparing permanent, resistive, and superconducting magnets, including cooling requirements and field strengths, and learn about gradient, shim, and RF coils for imaging.

Explains specialized MRI techniques, including diffusion-weighted imaging, ADC maps, perfusion MRI, TOF vascular imaging, MR spectroscopy, and contrast-enhanced methods for infarction and tissue characterization.

Explore MRI safety by examining static magnetic fields, gradient effects on tissues and implants, absolute contraindications, fetal considerations, restricted access zones, and quenching.