Number of credits: 2

Course Director: Bill Rooney

Course Description: The goal of this course is to ground students in the fundamentals of Magnetic Resonance Imaging of biological tissues. The course will be geared toward students who do not have a background in physics or engineering. The content will focus on the physics of MRI and how pulse sequences control the MR instrument hardware to create specific contrasts among different biological materials. A few common MRI sequences will be dissected to provide the basis for understanding how different sequence parameters influence image contrast. The influence of magnetic field strength gradients coils and image reconstruction techniques on image quality will be reviewed. Teaching will be primarily didactic with a high degree of in-class participation expected. At the end of the course students will understand the basic of MRI techniques and how different hardware and sequence parameters influence image contrast.