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 is mainly lectures on MR basics, acquisition methods and parameters. Analysis of functional and structural imaging data will be covered in detail during the second half of the course.

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 under "Open University".

Dates, time, place: The course starts Friday January 20th, 2012. It continues for approximately 12 weeks every Friday from 1:30 to 4pm (may be adjusted slightly based on participant wishes). 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. It requires a working installation of Matlab as described on the SPM home page.

Credit: The 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 program based on 2010-program, divided on weeks (update follows):

Friday January 20th, 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 January 27th, MRI acquisition, part 2:

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

 

Friday February 3th, MRI acquisition, part 3:

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

 

Friday February 10th: No lecture anticipated due to DRCMR QA Workshop.

 

Friday February 17th, 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 February 25th, 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 March 2nd, MRI analysis part 1, preprocessing:

• Introduction to analysis section of the course.

• Introduction to SPM8.
• fMRI preprocessing.

Friday March 9th, Cancelled due to RGL retreat

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

Friday March 23rd, MRI analysis part 3, contrasts:

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

Friday March 30th, MRI analysis part 4, practicalities:

• Scripting and batching basics
•  

Friday April 6th: No lecture due to Easter.

 

Friday April 13th, MRI analysis part 6, second-level inference:

• Contrasts, plotting and visualizations.

 

The lecture plan is adjusted during the course, and to some degree based on participant wishes. Updates are distributed to participants.