The course will provide the students with an introduction to the NMR phenomenon and to the principles of operation and the engineering of MRI systems. The course will review the following subjects:

The Physical basis of NMR: the nuclear spin, classical and quantum description of the NMR phenomenon, Bloch equations, relaxation mechanisms (T1, T2, T2*), basic pulse sequences, frequency shift, coupling and NMR spectroscopy.

MRI principles: k-space, Fourier imaging, techniques for fast scan of frequency space, noise and artifacts.

Specific MRI applications: measurement of displacement (DWI/DTI), measurement of function (BOLD), angiography and flow imaging, contrast agents, parallel coils, safety and the interaction of the measurement with tissues.

MRI hardware: magnets of various configurations, cooling, RF and gradient coils, receivers and sampling.