Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain

History

The first MR images of a human brain were obtained in 1978 by two groups of researchers at EMI Laboratories led by Ian Robert Young and Hugh Clow. In 1986, Charles L. Dumoulin and Howard R. Hart at General Electric developed MR angiography, and Denis Le Bihan obtained the first images and later patented diffusion MRI. In 1988, Arno Villringer and colleagues demonstrated that susceptibility contrast agents may be employed in perfusion MRI. In 1990, Seiji Ogawa at AT&T Bell labs recognized that oxygen-depleted blood with dHb was attracted to a magnetic field, and discovered the technique that underlies Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).

In the early 1980s to the early 1990s, 'Jedi' helmets, inspired by the 'Return of the Jedi' Star Wars film, were sometimes worn by children in order to obtain good image quality. The copper coils of the helmet were used as a radio aerial to detect the signals while the 'Jedi' association encouraged children to wear the helmets and not be frightened by the procedure. These helmets were no longer needed as MR scanners improved.

In the early 1990s, Peter Basser and Le Bihan, working at NIH, and Aaron Filler, Franklyn Howe, and colleagues developed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Joseph Hajnal, Young and Graeme Bydder described the use of FLAIR pulse sequence to demonstrate high signal regions in normal white matter in 1992. In the same year, John Detre, Alan P. Koretsky and coworkers developed arterial spin labeling. In 1997, Jürgen R. Reichenbach, E. Mark Haacke and coworkers at Washington University in St. Louis developed Susceptibility weighted imaging.

The first study of the human brain at 3.0 T was published in 1994, and in 1998 at 8 T. Studies of the human brain have been performed at 9.4 T (2006) and up to 10.5 T (2019).

Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield were awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning MRI.

The record for the highest spatial resolution of a whole intact brain (postmortem) is 100 microns, from Massachusetts General Hospital. The data was published in Scientific Data on 30 October 2019.