Annual course improving your MRI understanding. 

Course title: Magnetic Resonance Imaging Basics

Content and format: The course provides a basis for understanding MRI measurements, pitfalls and literature. The course is not enabling in itself, but provides a starting point for further studies. It covers introductory MRI acquisition in a series of ~7 weekly interactive lectures starting October 24th, 2017. These include MR basics, acquisition methods and parameters with a focus on understanding. Detailed topics are described below. Active participation is required. 

The course starts at a level requiring little or no MR experience, and a technical background is not required. The target audience is employees and students at the MR department but the course is open for external participants (a fee may apply -- see below). 

The course covers prerequisites needed to possibly later follow an independent PhD course on MRI acquisition technologies (DRCMR, to be announced). It also gives a good basis for attending the technical spring course Medical Magnetic Resonance Imaging offered as part of the Biomedical Engineering program at the Technical University of Denmark, and which is also available for non-DTU-students (offered under "Open University". Note that some math & programming skills are required).

Dates, time, place: The course starts Tuesday afternoon 13:30-16, October 24th, 2017. It continues weekly (same time) until approximately December 5th (see tentative lecture plan below). The venue is the DRCMR conference room.

Registration: The  course is open, but subject to a fee of DKK 5000 unless you are sufficiently connected to the DRCMR. Ask Karam Sidaros if in doubt (), and sign up to Lars () including info about your affiliation, and payment details, if relevant ("EAN number", address and reference). You will then be added to 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.

Credit: The course has a workload corresponding to 1.5 ECTS points. You do not, however, automatically get credit for the course in any education. You can get a certificate and apply for credit at your school, but be aware that no general evaluation is planned, which may be required for a credit-bearing course. A brief informal exam focused on your particular interests can be arranged on an individual basis upon request (by default only offered to DRCMR participants, who may also by appointment hand in a report to get more study credits). This is required for the organizer to recommend 2 ECTS in total (up to 2.5 depending on assignments/exams).

Language: The course language is English. Participants are welcome to respond and ask questions in Danish, if preferred.

Organizer and lecturer:  Lars G. Hanson (senior scientist at DRCMR, and associate professor at DTU).

Preliminary outline divided on weeks (more precise updates are sent to participants):

Tuesday October 24th, 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.

Tuesday October 31st, part 2:

• Relaxation time weighting. Sequence diagrams, contrast
• Sequence building blocks: Inversion, saturation, lipid/water suppression.

Tuesday November 7th, part 3:

• Dephasing, refocusing, T2*, spin echoes
• Magnetic interaction with tissue
• Fast low angle shot (FLASH)

MR notes from "Imaging" and beyond are covered during the coming weeks.

Tuesday November 14th, part 4:

• Shimming
• Contrast overview, contrast agents
• Gradients, slice selection
• phase, phase-rolls

Tuesday November 21st, part 5:

• Imaging and k-space. Echo time revisited.
• k-space trajectories, artifacts (distortions, ghosting and aliasing), noise and image quality quantification.

Tuesday November 28th, part 6:

• Sequence and weighting follow-up.

Tuesday December 5th, part 7:

• Diffusion weighting

Tuesday December 12th, part 8:

• fMRI
• Possibly extras, depending on wishes

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 registered participants (see above).