Foreword to the Second Edition

Jeffrey L. Duerk

Almost 30 years ago, while a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University, I enrolled in a new course: The Physics of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (PHYS 431) that was being offered by Professors Mark Haacke and Robert Brown. Whole-body MR imaging systems had just emerged on the marketplace and the go-go days of MRI were upon us as numerous companies were dramatically ramping up their research and development efforts in this emerging, yet unproven field. In Cleveland alone, there was Picker International (now Philips Medical Systems) and Technicare (now GE); there were almost 20 MR systems in hospitals and at the manufacturers’ facilities. The worldwide need for scientists and engineers with excellent preparation in the underlying physics of MR, signal detection, k-space, and a variety of pulse sequences was clear. Ultimately, over the next few years, PHYS 431 class notes were organized into sections, then chapters, and, eventually, ‘the green bible’ as we know this book today. Within a few years, it was translated into Chinese. For many, the book has served not only as a textbook, but as a sustaining reference on numerous aspects of NMR and MR imaging. Today, ‘Haacke, Brown, Thompson and Venkatesan’ has reached 2000 citations and counting.

For me, in the intervening 30 years, I went from a student to an industry-based researcher who still remembers fondly those go-go days, the advances and friendships formed, and the definitive impact that MRI provided in patient care. Upon returning to academia, I have seen my own students cut their teeth on this book, move to industry and academic positions, and go on to adopt it in their own courses. This has been repeated across universities, programs, and institutions around the world. The impact of this seminal teaching book is hard to calculate. Like Abragam before it, the book has achieved its authors’ goals of sustainable impact and becoming a classic in the field.

Like all things, the field has changed dramatically since its original publication. Scan times of 25 minutes are now replaced by those of 25 milliseconds, or so, using novel sequences, novel trajectories, and constrained reconstruction. Field strengths of 0.15T, 0.3T, and 0.5T are replaced by the now more common field strengths of 1.5T and 3.0T, with 7.0T, 9.4T, and higher either solidly established or emerging on the horizon. Gradient strengths have increased from the lowly 3mT/m 30 years ago to 40mT/m on many systems today and soon some systems will have the capability of 80mT/m. Topics that have emerged today were not fully formed at the time of the first edition, and, hence, this version is not only greatly anticipated but also fulfills the promise of the original version in providing solid practical and rigorous theoretical underpinnings, and relevant challenging homework questions. Topics like parallel imaging via RF receive coils arrays and numerous other technical insights highlight the additions. The challenge, of course, is how to keep a ‘classic’ a classic in such a dynamic and rapidly evolving field as MR imaging. As with the early versions, I tip my hat to the authors for their selection of topics and also their patience in allowing ‘hot’ fields to reach an appropriate level of sustainability and impact before inclusion here.

On behalf of others like me, who grew up (and continue) using ‘the green bible,’ I want to extend my congratulations and thanks to the authors for this new edition. I anxiously await not only the next generation of discoveries it facilitates but also the next generation of scientists it supports. Well done!

Jeffrey L. Duerk, Ph.D.
Dean, Case Western Reserve University School of Engineering
Leonard Case Professor
Professor, Biomedical Engineering & Radiology
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH

June 11, 2013

Hiroyuki Fujita

Studying the second edition of this textbook on MRI physics has connected marvelous memories: my beginning graduate school experience, many early and long-lasting friendships, internships and major responsibilities with leading OEMs, returning to direct physics research at my alma mater, and then incubating and growing an MRI manufacturing company, Quality Electrodynamics. QED’s success has led to such recognitions as a Presidential and First Lady’s guest of honor at the 2012 State of the Union Address and a 2013 Presidential Award for Export. From my own education to the training of my team to the business awards, this big green book started and buttressed it all.

I can echo Professor Jeff Duerk’s words about his start in MRI because I too began by enrolling in PHYS 431, but a decade later. By the 1990s, this ‘Physics of Imaging’ had become a standard CWRU course for a graduate imaging track in both the physics and the biomedical engineering departments. The notes from this course became the primary teaching tool in MRI, which I refer to here as the big green book. Professor Mark Haacke introduced me to MR imaging before he left Case Western Reserve University to start his own company and research institute. Immediately after this, I began my Ph.D. with Professor Robert Brown in hardware design, a key move in view of QED’s rf coil products. Thus began a series of prideful career-long collaborations with Professor Brown that continues to this day.

The big green book provided a foundation for all the CWRU graduate students I knew in MRI. My good friends, Mike Thompson and Norman Cheng, have been promoted from beginning students to achieving co-authorship. Like myself, they studied the course material, and went on to be teaching assistants, lecturers, and faculty. We could see the influence of the venerable physics textbooks such as Jackson’s Classical Electrodynamics (which influenced the QED name as well!) and Kittel’s just-in-time Thermal Physics homework. It is satisfying to notice how the ‘critical thinking’ goals that are so much in the current educational news — connecting new work to old, applying theory to practice, taking a first step even if the second is not yet clear, finding alternatives if one path fails, looking at whether a solution makes sense, and learning to collaborate — are strongly reflected in this textbook’s many problems and the lead-up to them. I am currently serving on the U.S. Manufacturing Council committee tasked with advising the Secretary of Commerce. Science education is recognized as having ever-increasing significance when discussing national policies necessary to improve the current and future workforce in America. I feel that the big green book is emblematic as a key tool in connecting physics and math to imaging science, biology, and chemistry, and preparing the student for an important high-tech career. This is a real teaching tool well received by many generations of CWRU students.

The rf material added in the second edition, especially in the new Chapter 28 on parallel imaging, is really welcome. Over the past decade, my industrial colleagues and I have constantly referenced this textbook and its chapters on signal-to-noise and contrast analysis, sequence parameters, and especially rf software and hardware topics. The green book is evident on many shelves of our company and, wherever we visit, we often observe that it is so beat-up a new edition is really needed. It is not just the expanded rf treatment that will stimulate folks to replace their (dilapidated) first editions.

As the writer of a foreword in this new edition, I perhaps have the responsibility to revisit the original words by Professor Felix Wehrli to report on what has been added. The book continues to be most appropriate for the physics and engineering graduate and advanced undergraduate classes, with the first two years of math and science in typical technical university curricula as sufficient prerequisites. On the face of it, this second edition is not changed terribly much, with one chapter added to the original twenty-seven. Besides new material in Chapters 17 and 28, however, there seem to be countless improvements found throughout the text and, particularly, the problems. With the new material taking us to a 1000-page book, the authors can be forgiven the omission of some topics such as diffusion tensor weighted imaging. I do know in practice they tend to emphasize hardware better by teaching the material in Chapter 27 earlier in the semester, and I suggest other instructors adopting this text do the same. In my world one can understand why I believe this is a very good suggestion.

Professor Wehrli spoke of ‘exceptional didactic skill’ and predicted ‘Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Physical Principles and Sequence Design is likely to become the daily companion of the MRI scientist and a reference standard for years to come.’ I believe his prediction came true. Over the past decade, the book has exceeded 5,000 printed copies and been cited thousands of times, more than those from a number of standard physics textbooks. Its sales have stayed constant right up to the present time. I expect that the new edition will, in the words of Professor Duerk, keep this classic a classic in the coming decade. With my close connections to the authors, customers and contacts in industry and academia often ask me if I know anything about any new edition. After 14 years, I’m thrilled to tell them the second edition is finally here!

Hiroyuki Fujita, Ph.D.
Quality Electrodynamics LLC
Mayfield Village, OH

June 28,...