Practical MR Physics and Case File of MR Artifacts and Pitfalls. Alexander C. Mamourian. Oxford University Press 2010, 320 pages, 375 illustrations, $59.95.
A newly published 320-page soft cover book Practical MR Physics written by Dr. Mamourian strives to make the physics of MR understandable (as seen through the eyes of a neuroradiologist), categorize various MR artifacts, and demonstrate pitfalls (that is, findings on MR which are not artifacts but which potentially could lead one to believe they represented abnormal/pathologic findings). The book ends with what are termed puzzlers (10 cases, 7 of them are neuro based), and this reviewer would suggest doing as I did — start with the puzzlers to see if the book needs to be read in its entirety. To any inexperienced radiologist or to a trainee (resident/fellow), the 7 cases should be of sufficient interest to encourage the reading of this book.
The treatment of the MR physics is non-mathematical and is dealt with in a conversational and easy to understand manner. Dr. Mamourian takes us through magnets, the meaning of precession and resonance, and then the nuts and bolts of MR images (slice selection, frequency encoding, phase encoding, k space, relaxation times, contrast parameters, and some of the safety issues in MR). The sprinkling of historical notes in this section make for interesting reading.
The Artifacts section is worth looking over. Most of these are immediately recognizable such as CSF flow artifacts, wrap around artifacts, and magnetization shine thru. Of course we recognize these, but sometimes the explanation for the artifacts escapes us. Dr. Mamourian does a nice job in explaining why you see what you see.
The Pitfalls section is actually more important and more useful with demonstration and explanation of entities we often encountered such as pacchionian granulations, processes which are bright on DWI but are not infarctions, the affect of oxygen on FLAIR images, abnormalities of the dural venous sinuses and more. If there is to be a future edition, this reviewer would urge the author to utilize more of a page for many of the images—for example there are very small images of a pituitary gland while half the page is blank (page 161). The same applies to a single para sagittal reformatted CT image (page 187), which occupies only 25% of an otherwise blank page. There are other similar examples. Careful copy editing is also encouraged so that mistakes in legend reversal as in figure A20.3 and A26.4 are eliminated.
This book would be one to which residents and fellows in neuroradiology should have access. It can be a valuable addition to a section’s library.
