Magnetic resonance imaging became clinical in 1981 and since that time,
has spread in the United States, Europe and Japan like wild fire. The
tremendous advantages of the method consisting of safety, superb soft
tissue contrast resolution, the ability to study flow, the ability to
image in any plane or acquire data in 3D and an almost infinite array of
sequences capable of distinguishing between disease and normal tissue,
normal and abnormal blood flow make it incomparable for the diagnosis
and study of multiple diseases and is particularly valuable in studying
the heart and major vessels. The authors of this book have understood
that the secret of success of MR imaging in the study of the heart is to
combine the knowledge of anatomy of the heart, the coronary vessels, the
pericardium and large vessels with the intricacies of MR imaging. This
is why they go deeply into the basic principles of NMR, starting from
the essentials and going then into detailed techniques of acquiring
images from traditional spin echo to gradient echo and ultra fast
imaging approaches, such as the multi shot and EPI. The flow phenomena
are also discussed in detail from flow and magnetic field gradients
diastolic pseudogating.