Evaluation of MRI Concepts as a teaching and learning resource

Abstract

The education of medical imaging (MI) students at universities includes the teaching of many imaging modalities including general x-ray, fluoroscopy, conventional angiography, digital subtraction angiography, ultrasound, computer tomography (CT) and the latest modality, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Ultrasound and MRI differ from the other modalities as they do not use ionising radiation, x-rays, as their means of producing an image of the patient. Ionising radiation is the focus of the teaching to MI students in the first two years of their three-year undergraduate degree. MRI, which utilises high magnetic fields and radio-waves to acquire images (Stark and Bradley, 1999), is only broached in the third year of the MI degree. The physics and principles of MRI are vastly different from the other imaging modalities taught at undergraduate level and require additional teaching resources and approaches for student understanding. Medical imaging undergraduate students also need to evaluate magnetic resonance (MR) images to become familiar with MR contrasts of T1, T2 and Proton Density (PD). A further part of the course’s requirements is the ability to evaluate MR image quality. This requires a knowledge of the MR parameters that affect both MR image contrast and quality. This evaluation of MR contrast and quality, in the past, has typically been achieved through students evaluating images in texts, and on occasions, having access to clinical MRI units. Textbooks typically used in MI courses (Hashemi and Bradley, 1997; Westbrook and Kaut, 1998; Bushong, 1996; Woodward and Freimarck, 1995) tend to provide only a few examples of MR image contrast and very few examples of how MR parameters change both MR contrast and quality. Student access to clinical MRI units is difficult to gain. Of the 130 internal and 50 distance education (DE) students at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in 1997, less than 5% have had any substantial time observing an MRI unit in operation (internal CSU survey; 1997 – unpublished). A project was proposed to assist in overcoming the above difficulties. The project’s goals were to simulate production of clinical quality MR images on a PC environment and allow students to interact with and manipulate MRI factors so as to be able to analyse the changes in the resultant MR images. MR image contrast and quality assessment would be the focus of the use of such a teaching tool. An additional benefit would be that a PC based program would provide equity between internal and DE students, where DE students often only have limited access to library resources.