A good MRI examination is built long before the first sequence runs.
It depends on a careful screening conversation, a patient comfortable enough to stay still, the right coil in the right place, and a plan that fits the clinical question. Those decisions happen every day, often under time pressure, and they rarely get written down. Until now, most of them have been passed along at the scanner, one shift at a time.
Practical MRI, part of the MRI Physics and Practice Series, puts them on the page. This is a working reference for the scanner room: how to set up, plan, run, and check an examination so that the radiologist has what is needed, and how to recognize when the next decision belongs to someone else.
Four opening chapters build a safe framework for daily work. The regional chapters then follow the same dependable pattern, so you can find what you need in seconds: positioning and coil table, plane planning, protocol table, troubleshooting table, and a daily-practice checklist, with scenario walk-throughs that show how real decisions get made at the console.
Every regional chapter answers the questions that matter. What is the clinical question? How should the patient lie, and which coil fits? Where do the planes go? Which sequences make a sensible starting protocol? What usually goes wrong, and what is the first fix to try? Clear tables keep the answers easy to scan when the list is running late.
What you will find inside:
- Screening, zones, projectiles, implants, and conditional scanning decisions
- RF heating, SAR, burns, acoustic noise, quench, and MRI emergencies
- Contrast agents, IV access, monitoring, and patient care
- Brain, head and neck, and spine protocols
- Shoulder, elbow, wrist, hand, hip, pelvis, knee, ankle, and foot
- Chest and cardiac, breast, liver and abdomen, and MRCP
- Male and female pelvis, plus MR angiography and venography
- Pediatric, claustrophobic, sedated, monitored, and high-dependency patients
- Image quality troubleshooting and artifact fixes you can apply at the console
Richly illustrated for the way you work. Slice-plan plates show where the stack goes and what the resulting plane should contain, while real scan plates show what a finished series looks like. Vendor-neutral protocol starting points, a table of vendor sequence names, a blank site protocol worksheet, and a quick positioning reference make this book as useful on a busy list as it is during training.
Safety runs through every page. The book does not teach radiology or tell you what a finding means. It helps you do your part well and know when to stop and escalate. Protocol tables are starting points for each site to validate with its radiologists and medical physics support, so the book strengthens your department's practice rather than replacing it.
Written for MRI technologists, radiographers, and students on clinical placement, and for anyone cross-training into MRI who wants clear, organized guidance beyond what a physics text can offer.
Picture the next unfamiliar request arriving on your worklist. You open to the right chapter, confirm the positioning, plan the planes, check the protocol, and know what to do if the first sequence comes back poor. That is the calm this book is designed to bring to your day.
Complete the MRI Physics and Practice Series. MRI Physics Explained builds the physics behind every setting in this book, and MRI Registry Practice Tests 2027 turns your scanning experience into exam readiness.
Keep it beside the console. Get your copy and scan with more confidence on every shift.
