Magnetic Resonance Imaging

1721 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Short history of mri

The Faces Behind the Discovery of Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Isidor Isaac Rabi

He won the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physics for his "resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei."

He was the one to discover that protons have magnetic moments and that they precess around an external magnetic field. His experiments (on nuclei) revealed the jump between energy states of the proton when resonated with radio frequency waves.

Felix Bloch & Edward Purcell

Both men independently took Rabi's experiments to the next level - condensed matter.

Purcell Bloch

These men were awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics for the "nuclear magnetic resonance in condensed matter."

Paul Lauterbur

Lauterbur discovered that images could be produced from the magnetic properties of the protons. This will now be called magnetic resonance imaging.

Paul is a professor at the University of Illinois

He was the first to use a magnetic field gradient to vary the resonant frequencies of spinning atoms. Although his images were very difficult to produce, he had a variety - glass tubes, mouse thoracic cavity, and the first human body part - a finger!!

Richard Ernst

He discovered that sending pulsed signals through a changing magnetic field would produce images very quickly. This made it possible for health professionals to actually be able to utilize MRI.

He was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to the development of the methodology of high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy."

All of these men contributed tremendously to the design and implementation of MRI scanning machines in hospitals. Now, MRI scans are another common hospital resource.

Before MRI scans, X-rays were popular. However, X-rays use ionizing radiation that could be harmful to humans.

Now, MRI scans are used for a huge variety of injuries, infections, or illnesses, such as:

multiple sclerosis, torn ligaments, tendonitis, cysts, spinal injuries, strokes, and many others.

MRI scans can even be used to record brain activity during certain events.

Show More
Related

  • MRI Personal Statement

    305 Words  | 1 Pages

    My interest in MRI started when I first read the book “MRI, The Basics” written by the author Ray Hashemi. By the time I successfully finished my MRI clinical placement in Tehran University of Medical Sciences, I knew for sure that MRI would be the field I would be choosing to take on. What attracts me most about MRI is how beautifully scientist could create a technology that can take advantage of the magnetic moments of human body for imaging it without any harms of ionizing radiation. Although there are drawbacks to MRI, combining it with other modalities would be a more effective approach to an accurate diagnosis.

    Read More

  • Neuropsychology & Spouse/Family Members

    1818 Words  | 4 Pages

    The MRI, on the other hand is less expensive and much safer (as it doesn’t expose the patient to potentially harmful radioactive chemicals). The MRI or magnetic resonance imaging device, as an safer alternative, applies a powerful magnetic field around the head of the patient.

    Read More

  • How Did Robert Oppenheimer Impact Society

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    Oppenheimer's early studies were devoted mainly to energy processes of subatomic particles, including electrons,positrons, and cosmic rays. He also did innovative work on not only neutron stars but also black holes. His university provided him with an excellent opportunity to research the quantum theory, along with exploration and development of its full significance. This helped him train an entire generation of U.S. physicists. Furthermore, the most important impact was the invention of the atomic bomb.

    Read More

  • Biography of Robert Burns Woodward

    865 Words  | 2 Pages

    physics. The work of Ernest Rutherford, H. G. J. Moseley, and Niels Bohr on atomic

    Read More

  • Magnetic Significance Imaging And MRI

    618 Words  | 2 Pages

    Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is considered as one of the pioneers in medical imaging for diagnosis of pathologies involving soft tissues and internal structures. MRI provides good contrast resolution between different soft tissues of the body especially in brain, muscles, heart etc compared to other medical imaging modalities like computed tomograpgy (CT) and conventional radiography which utilizes x-rays for imaging. The other important aspect of MRI versus other imaging modalities like CT and conventional radiography is that MRI uses no ionizing radiation like x-rays for imaging, instead it uses a strong magnetic field to align the magnetization of some atoms within the body , then uses radiofrequency pulses to systematically alter the alignment of this magnetization. This process causes the nuclei of certain atoms to produce a magnetic field which can be detected by the scanner, and all this information is used to reconstruct an MR image of the scanned area of the body. The initial experiments by Sir Otto Stern in the year 1922 stated that physically the magnetic resonance ima...

    Read More

  • Albert Einstein's Role In Building The Atomic Bomb

    548 Words  | 2 Pages

    It was Italian-born physicist and Nobel winner Enrico Fermi, and his colleagues at the University of Chicago who were responsible for this success (“Nuclear”).

    Read More

  • Benjamin Franklin

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    This was the beginning of many awards in his experiments to come. He was elected to the Royal Society on May 29, 1756. This is probably one of the most influential factors in his work and this is one way that his work was seen by people all over Europe and other parts of the world. Members of the Royal Society had their scientific works published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. (DOSB,129)

    Read More

  • MRI: An Advancement in Technology

    803 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the most recently new advances in radiology is the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI has been around for the past century. It was at first called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and then it changed to MRI once there was an available image. Walter Gerlach and Otto Stern were the first scientists to start experimenting with the magnetic imaging. Their very first experiment was looking at the magnetic moments of silver by using some type of x-ray beam. The scientists then discovered this was by realizing that the magnetic force in the equipment and in the object itself. In 1975, the first image was finally created using and MRI machine. The scientists used a Fourier Transformation machine to reconstruct images into 2D. The first images ever use diagnostically was in 1980. This is when hospitals began to use them. At first the images took hours to develop and were only used on the patients that needed it most. Even though MRI has been around for a long time, it has advanced and has been one of the best imaging modalities recently (Geva, 2006).

    Read More

  • How has Technology Changed the field of Radiology?

    1425 Words  | 3 Pages

    Garcia, Kimberly. Wilhelm Roentgen and the Discovery of X Rays. Bear: Mitchell Lane, 2003. Print.

    Read More

  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging Great Helps Medicine

    764 Words  | 2 Pages

    The machine is a 100% accurate method of disease detection throughout the body and is most often used after other testing methods have failed to provide sufficient information to confirm a patient’s diagnosis. According to journalist Mary Bellis, two brilliant men Felix Block of Stanford University and Edward Purcell of Harvard University discovered MRI in the 1930s. Because of their discoveries they used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to study composition of chem...

    Read More

  • Six Easy Pieces By Richard Feynman

    1653 Words  | 4 Pages

    Richard P. Feynman was born in 1918 in Brooklyn; in 1942 he received his Ph.D. from Princeton. Already displaying his brilliance, Feynman played an important role in the development of the atomic bomb through his work in the Manhattan Project. In 1945 he became a physics teacher at Cornell University, and in 1950 he became a professor at the California Institute of Technology. He, along with Sin-Itero and Julian Schwinger, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his work in the field of quantum electrodynamics.

    Read More

  • Michael Faraday

    847 Words  | 2 Pages

    Although Faraday was unsuccessful when it came to money, he was very successful in the field of science, namely electric science. One of his most important discoveries is that of electro-magnetic induction. It was this experiment, and others of the like, that brought about the discoveries of Maxwell, Rutherford, and Einstein, and elevated Faraday from the son of a poor blacksmith, to a great man of modern science.

    Read More

  • Mathematics of Telescopes

    1229 Words  | 3 Pages

    He was one of the first who created the "looker" (now called telescope) by placing two pieces of lenses together. The discovery that placing lenses together can magnify images was made by children who took Lippershey's spectacles and looked at a distant church tower. One of the most influential scientists associated with the telescope has to be Galileo. He took the design and reinvented the telescope into one of the first refractive telescopes we use to this day. Galileo used this great invention to report astronomical facts such as the moon is covered with craters instead of being smooth, the Milky Way is composed of millions of stars, and Jupiter has four moons.

    Read More

  • Albert Einstein: A Radical Genius

    646 Words  | 2 Pages

    "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921". nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

    Read More

  • Michael Faraday

    551 Words  | 2 Pages

    The research that established Faraday as the foremost experimental scientist of his day was, however, in the fields of electricity and magnetism. In 1821 he plotted the magnetic field around a conductor carrying an electric current; the existence of the magnetic field had first been observed by the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted in 1819.

    Read More

More about Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Open Document