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Richard Henson, INTRODUCTION TO FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING: PRINCIPLES AND TECHNIQUES, Brain, Volume 126, Issue 9, September 2003, Page 2110, https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awg251
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INTRODUCTION TO FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING: PRINCIPLES AND TECHNIQUES By Richard B. Buxton 2002. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Price £95. ISBN 0521581133
There can be no argument that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has revolutionised basic and clinical neuroscience. This book provides an accessible and comprehensive review of the current state of functional MRI (fMRI), the use of MRI ‘that goes beyond anatomy to measure aspects of local physiology’. The book does well as an ‘introduction’, given the complex nature of some of the issues (such as image reconstruction). I very much enjoyed reading it.
The book is organised into three sections, with Section I essentially providing an overview of what is discussed in detail in Sections II and III. Section I also includes a brief review of energy metabolism in the brain and the basic (classical) physics of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) (an appendix discusses NMR in more detail, including the quantum physics perspective). Section II expands the principles of MRI, while Section III focuses on fMRI in particular. Section II thus covers image acquisition and reconstruction, including the basic concepts of T1, T2 and T2* relaxation, diffusion, gradient‐echo and spin‐echo sequences, slice‐selection, phase‐encoding, frequency‐encoding, Fourier transforms and K‐space, as well as various image artefacts. Section III covers techniques for perfusion imaging, including an introduction to tracer kinetics, contrast agents and arterial spin labelling (ASL), before finishing with the popular technique of blood oxygen level‐dependent (BOLD) imaging.
