Magnetic resonance in medicine

Rinck, Peter A., Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 4th Completely Revised Edition, including MR Imaging Expert Version 2.5, and Dynalize, Version 1.0 Demo by Blackwell Science Inc., Berlin, Germany, $104.95, pp 245, 219 figures, 45 tables, ISBN: 0632059869. Claudia Hillenbrand Ph.D.*, * University Hospitals of Cleveland and Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, Ohio, USA “The text has been written in such a way that newcomers to the field will be provided with the concepts, explanations and illustrations, necessary to master the basics of magnetic resonance in medicine”. This is the primary goal of author Peter A. Rinck stated in the foreword of his textbook Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, a book that serves as the primary textbook of the European Magnetic Resonance Forum, an organization with the mission to organize continuing education meetings on MR imaging and spectroscopy in medicine. covering the most important topics necessary to understand MRI, starting from basics such as magnetism and electricity, moving on to k-space and similar MR specifics, and ending with modern and advanced topics like dynamic contrast enhanced imaging and reviews of image artifacts and safety issues for patients and personnel; fulfilling an excellent teaching job by using many easy-to-understand cartoons and summarizing important information, e.g. relaxation times of normal and pathological tissue, in concise and comprehensive tables; providing two interactive software tools, MR Imaging Expert and Dynalize, and a sufficient amount of example data sets from volunteers and patients to allow the interested reader to playfully explore important aspects of MR imaging, e.g. the establishment of a certain image contrast as a function of the underlying sequence parameters via computer simulations. Hence, the book can especially be recommended for technologists, medical students, residents, and clinicians who are starting to work in the field of MRI and MRS, but also offers information to a wider audience, which would include engineering and basic science students and professionals interested in obtaining an introduction to MRI. The book is organized into 19 chapters, which are framed by an informative historical “prelude” and “finale” describing “MRI from an European Perspective”. Six entertaining and, as the author stated, subjective and critical “interludes” on topics such as “The Slow Life of Clinical Spectroscopy” or the already classic “How to Purchase an MR Machine—A Guide in Ten Easy Lessons” are garnishing the book delightfully. The foundations for MR are laid out in the first three chapters. Chapter 1 deals with basic terminology such magnetism, electricity, characteristics of the received signal, and also briefly touches the Fourier transform. The basics of the magnetic resonance effect are laid out in Chapter 2. In this chapter the reader can experience for the first time how the author uses very nice analogies to guide the reader through complex or abstract facts: for example the sound wave originated by a single and two bells of different sizes is used as an analogue for the FID of one or two chemical components. On top of that, the accompanying drawings are much clearer than words ever can be. Chapter 3 explains the main components of MR scanners and their function. Chapters 4 through 7 cover the basics of image and spectra formation. T1- and T2-relaxation as well as basic measurement techniques to determine these parameters, based on saturation recovery, inversion recovery, and spin echo experiments, are explained in chapter 4. Chapter 5 treats MR spectroscopy: the nuclei and basic techniques suitable for MRS in human in vivo are introduced. Image formation principles, including slice selection, and phase and frequency encoding are explained comprehensively and in detail in chapter 6 with the help of many illustrations. The introduction of k-space in chapter 7 is an excellent example of the synergy the author achieved with his text explanations, figures, and the interactive examples provided by the computer program MR Imaging Expert in order to illustrate the relation between k-space filling and residual image quality. The following four chapters deal with advanced imaging and contrast topics. Basic fast imaging techniques are covered in chapter 8. Chapter 9 describes in detail fundamentals of image characteristics like signal to noise, contrast to noise, and parameters influencing the relaxation process such as age and temperature. Chapter 10 lays out the contrast behavior and dependency of contrast factors. Again, MR Image Expert complements the text and tables very well. In particular, the tables provided in this chapter make excellent “cheat-sheets” for quick reference. Advanced contrast manipulation and preparation techniques, like magnetization transfer, diffusion, and BOLD imaging are topic of the following chapter (11). In the next two chapters (12 & 13), the fundamentals of contrast agents are briefly introduced, followed by a general overview of contrast agents currently used in clinical and experimental investigations including blood pool agents, hyperpolarized gases, targeted agents for molecular imaging, and their underlying contrast mechanism. Chapter 14 concentrates on MR angiography and cardiac imaging including contrast enhanced techniques. Dynamic contrast enhanced studies (ch. 16), e.g. for brain, heart, and breast imaging, follow a chapter on image processing and visualization techniques (ch. 15). The second included software program Dynalize and an example data set from a breast cancer study is used to illustrate and analyze contrast dynamics, and even allows to calculate enhancement parameter maps. The final chapters of the book are devoted to the origin, manifestation and remedy of common imaging artifacts (ch. 17) and safety of patient and personnel (ch. 18). The book concludes with a short software description, installation notes and license agreement (chapter 19). There are a few weak points in the textbook along with some typographical errors, e.g. the gradient and signal objects in figure 8-3 are misaligned. Furthermore, although a detailed reference list was provided at the end of basically each chapter, one very fundamental reference was missing in chapter 4 and may be added in a future revised edition: E. Hahn's famous work on the formation of spin echoes (Phys Rev 80(1950): 580-594). One link in the book leads to a missing software feature (demonstration of bit errors as part of MR Image Expert), another link refers to a sample data set (DCE brain data set for Dynalize) that does not exist on the accompanying CD-ROM. Overall, the author succeeded in delivering an introductory MR book: the information provided is complete and accurate, the illustrations are appealing and informative, the tables are compact and useful, and the additional software has a high value of its own. Reviewed by.