Magnetic resonance imaging- physical principles and clinical application

The advances in equipment and knowledge related to radiology are occurring at an astonishingly rapid rate. On November 8, 1895, William Conrad Roentgen discovered x-rays. In 1972, Godfrey Hounsfield and George Ambrose introduced computec tomography at a meeting of the British Institute of Radiology. In the same year, Paul Lauterbur published the idea of spatially resolving nuclear magnetic resonance samples, naming it zeugmatography. In 1977, Waldo Hinshaw and co-workers published a magnetic resonance image of a human hand and wrist, and by 1981 several centres were obtaining clinical magnetic resonance (MR) images. In a very short time, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has gained acceptance as a clinically useful imaging tool. (author)