MRI DEVELOPMENTS IN PERSPECTIVE

Following Paul Lauterbur's seminal 1973 paper in Nature, considerable work was needed to overcome a number of physical, engineering and tech nical problems before the new technique of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could be applied clinically. Much of that pioneering work was do ne in the UK. Since the first head and whole-body images were obtained in the late 1970s, MRI has become a widely used clinical imaging moda lity capable of yielding tomographic images of excellent spatial resol ution and tissue contrast. This review outlines the historical develop ment of MRI in the context both of the technical problems which had to be overcome, and of the clinical uses of MRI. Current areas of resear ch, such as the use of MRI to map brain function, the measurement of p hysiological parameters such as tissue perfusion, and the use of open- access realtime MRI to guide interventional procedures, are briefly di scussed.