Handbook of MRI Scanning, Love this book!

First let me give you a little background. I am an Bench-top NMR tech with about 1 years experience in the field. As many mri techs have learned that are new to the field, when you first get out there on your own, its kinda scary. Unlike most xray techs who have a few other techs around in the department when you have questions, most MRI contrast agent are by themselves. Anyways, this book was my best friend the first few months of my new job. I happen to work on a ge machine, which is what this book is based off of. Thats not to say if you work on a siemens or toshiba that this wouldnt help, it still shows how to set up the slices, how to angle and gives you other technical parameters, just if youre working on a ge, that would be ideal for this book. I love how it shows you the actual slices and where they should be placed, what the actual scan should look like and different views of different planes. Also I love that it gives you a little anatomy diagram next to each part that youre potentially scanning. Great book for new techs.

Overall, this book is great for anyone learning MRI as a tech, or for someone coming from a research/physicist background and needs to learn the anatomy-specific scan protocols. An experienced expert MRI tech would probably have a good handle on 95% of this book, but for anyone not at that level, it is a great reference and learning resource.

**Description**
This comprehensive manual on MRI details protocols, image acquisition, and related anatomy.

**Purpose**
This book provides technologists and students with not only a baseline for MR image acquisition, but also a standard of quality that should be consistently duplicated to provide the healthcare team with quality diagnostic images. The book carries out the authors' clearly defined objectives.

**Audience**
This is a must read for any student or beginning technologist. It does a great job of providing a practical, realistic approach to MRI that avoids confusing physics and equations. Experienced technologists will appreciate the suggested scan protocols, with technical parameters for both 1.5 and the more advanced 3T magnets.

**Features**
The manual details over 50 MRI protocols, the pulse sequences of each, and the suggested parameters for quality baseline imaging. Also valuable are anatomy diagrams for each protocol with appropriate labeling and a table of technical parameters for all scan protocols for both 1.5 and 3T magnets. In addition, blank tables are provided for readers to modify their site protocols to accommodate the capabilities of their specific equipment. The best feature of this manual is its simplicity. The only shortcoming for me is the duplication of information from one section to another, but this certainly does not detract from the book's quality and usefulness.

**Assessment**
This manual would be invaluable for students or beginning technologists and a great reference for seasoned technologists. I have never seen another book that packed as much useful and simplistic information into such a small package.

This is a great reference book that is so far unique in the collection of MRI books out there as a spiral-bound have-next-to-the-scanner book. The next nearest book out there is Handbook of MRI Technique, though this book is much more detailed in both sequences and specific anatomy areas. This book lists out the common pulse sequences for both 1.5T and 3T, and also displays basic scan plane prescriptions. There are also line drawings of the anatomy of interest, similar to the drawings found in Sectional Anatomy for Imaging Professionals. There is also valuable information found at the beginning of each chapter which describes some of the rationale for some of the PSD selection, coils, contrast, artifacts, etc...
The charts in the book list actual parameters and imaging options for each sequence, with an additional blank chart in each section meant for reader to write in their own site's standard sequences. With customized saved protocols in most scanning software, I question how useful the blank tables are, other than for general sequence listings.
In future editions of this book, I would like to see a column for "Frequency direction" with it filled in as A/P, R/L, S/I. The listed "SPF swap phase & freq" can still be ambiguous and sometimes coil dependent. Other improvements I would make would be graphical views of sat band positions, listing of an estimated scan time per sequence, and also a brief discussion on the use of options like ZIP2, ZIP512, sequential, etc... Also, a flag for scans which are meant typically for a breath-hold would be nice.