Preclinical MRI

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the most versatile ofall in vivo imaging modalities, was born in 1973, when the Nobel Prize awardees, Paul C. Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield, at the State University of New York and the University of Nottingham, published their pioneering works on the use ofmagnetic field gradients to spatially localize the NMRsignal. Lauterbur obtained images of two water filled tubes using magnetic field gradients and backprojection. He named this new imaging technique “zeugmatography,” derived from the Greek word zeugma, meaning “that which is used for joining,” in reference to the joint action of magnetic field gradients and radiofrequency to generate the image. In the same year, Mansfield published his work demonstrating how a linear field gradient, along with the Fourier transform, could be used to localize the NMR signal from different layers within a solid sample, which is the basis of the slice selection used nowadays. Later, in 1977, Mansfield and Maudsley obtained the first image of a part of the human body, a finge