Course title: Magnetic Resonance Imaging Techniques and Analysis

Content and format: The course covers introductory MRI acquisition and image processing methods. The first half of the course until December 21st 2012 is mainly lectures on MR basics, acquisition methods and parameters. Analysis of functional and structural imaging data will be covered during the second half of the course starting around February 2013.

The course starts at a level requiring little or no MR experience. A technical background is not required. The target audience is employees and students at the MR department but the course is open and free for external participants.

DRCMR employees, students, new-comers and co-workers are given priority if we (against expectations) have to limit the number of participants due to space limitations.

The main aim of the course is to provide a basis for understanding MRI measurements, pitfalls and literature. The acquisition part of the course covers the basics  needed to follow the more technical course Medical Magnetic Resonance Imaging offered as part of the Medicine&Technology program at the Technical University of Denmark in the spring, and which is also available for non-DTU-students (offered under "Open University").

Dates, time, place: The acquisition part of the course starts Friday October 26th, 2012. It continues approximately every Friday from 1:30 to 4pm (No teaching November 14th, though). The venue is the DRCMR conference room.

Registration: The course is free and open. No registration required, but please send a mail to to get on the course mailing list.

Literature and software: The course is initially based on notes http://eprints.drcmr.dk/37/ (also available in Danish). Other course notes, slides and relevant articles are provided during the course. The SPM software available at http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/ which will be used during the analysis part starting in 2013. It requires a working installation of Matlab as described on the SPM home page.

Credit: The full course has a workload corresponding to 2-5 ECTS points depending on exams/assignments taken (2 is 1/15 semester workload) but you do not automatically get credit for the course in any education. You may apply for credit at your school, but be aware that no general evaluation is planned, which may be required for a credit bearing course. This can possibly be arranged on an individual basis upon request, and is required for the organizers to recommend more than 2 ECTS.

Language: The course is given in English, or in Danish if all participants are Danish speaking (likely they are not).

Lecturers: The acquisition part is coordinated by Lars G. Hanson , and the analysis part by Arnold Skimminge.

Preliminary outline, divided on weeks (updates follow to those that register for course newsletters):

Friday October 26th, MRI acquisition, part 1:

• Sections "Magnetic Resonance" until "Sequences" in MR notes are discussed during the coming few weeks (the English and Danish versions are similar).
• Protons, spin, net magnetization, precession, radio waves, resonance, relaxation, rotating and stationary frames of reference, T1 and T2.

Friday November 2nd, MRI acquisition, part 2:

• Relaxation time weighting. Dephasing, refocusing, T2*, spin echoes, and sequences.
• Contrast overview, slice selection, spectroscopy.

Friday November 9th, MRI acquisition, part 3:

• Spectroscopy continued, dephasing/refocusing, flow/diffusion measurements.

Friday November 16th: No lecture anticipated due to Hvidovre Hospital theme day.

Friday November 23rd, MRI acquisition, part 4:

• Saturation and inversion.
• MR notes from "Imaging" and beyond are covered during the coming weeks.
• Gradients, image-formation and k-space. Echo time revisited.

Friday November 30th, MRI acquisition, part 5:

• Imaging continued, field strength issues, coils.
• Sequence elements, k-space trajectories, artifacts (distortions, ghosting and aliasing), noise and image quality quantification.

Friday December 7th:

• No lecture

Friday December 14th:

• No lecture

Friday December 21st, MRI acquisition, part 6:

• Flow and diffusion weighting. Sequence building blocks: Inversion, saturation, lipid suppression...

The analysis part of the course will likely start in February with the following approximate program:

MRI analysis part 1, preprocessing:

• Introduction to analysis section of the course.

• Introduction to SPM8.
• fMRI preprocessing.

• Introduction to fMRI statistics.
• First level analysis.
• Statistics 

MRI analysis part 3, contrasts:

• Introduction to statistical inference.
• Contrasts, plotting and visualizations. 

MRI analysis part 4, practicalities:

• Scripting and batching basics

MRI analysis part 5, second-level inference:

• Contrasts, plotting and visualizations.

The lecture plan is adjusted with respect to both subjects and timing during the course, and to some degree based on participant wishes. Updates are distributed to those that sign up for notifications (see above).