Isamu Mano

Progress in MR Systems for Medical Applications

Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI for short, is a diagnostic modality based on clinical images produced using the magnetic resonance signals emitted from organ’s protons. It was in 1980s that MRI first proved to be really practicable for clinical examinations. Since then, MRI has made such a remarkable progress that it is now indispensable for routine examinations. MRI has various advantages that other imaging modalities do not possess, the most important of which are noninvasive nature, ability to reveal soft tissues 3-dimensional imaging and suitability for examinations of vessels. While MRI does have some disadvantages and problems, some of these are gradually improved or solved. Judging from the coming progress made in fast and ultra-fast imaging and its successful application to organ functions, there are good prospects of a fruitful future for MRI.

A research method for MRI tissue characterization studies using small coils for excised organs.

The main purpose of this report is to describe our method of MRI tissue characterization studies, which consists of MR imaging of the patient, precision MR imaging of the excised organ, and pathological examination of the organ. We first made small coils to be used with conventional MRI scanners to examine the excised organs. In order to make it easier to understand the effectiveness of our method, three illustrative case reports of abdominal or pelvic tumors were presented as examples of the tissue characterization studies. In conclusion, this method seemed very useful and, in addition, it was found that this small coil technique has several advantages in other applications.