MRI artifacts

Changed by Laurent Bilodeau, 27 Sep 2018

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MRI artifacts are numerous and give an insight into the physics behind each sequence. Some artifacts affect the quality of the MRI exam while others do not affect the diagnostic quality but may be confused with pathology.

When encountering an unfamiliar artifact, it is useful to systematically examine general features of the artifact to try and understand its general class. These features include:

type of sequence, e.g. fast spin echo, gradient, volumetric acquisition
direction of phase and frequency
fat or fluid attenuation
presence of anatomy outside the image field
presence of metallic foreign bodies

Classification of the artifact type may give one an idea about how to try to fix it.

The artifacts

Many artifacts have a characteristic appearance and with experience they can be readily identified.

MRI hardware and room shielding

MRI software

slice-overlap artifact (also known as cross-talk artifact)
cross excitation

Patient and physiologic motion

Tissue heterogeneity and foreign bodies

Fourier transform and Nyquist sampling theorem

Artifacts are caused by a variety of factors that may be patient-related such as voluntary and physiologic motion, metallic implants or foreign bodies. Finite sampling, k-space encoding, and Fourier transformation may cause aliasing and Gibbs artifact. Characteristics of pulse sequences may cause black boundary, Moiré, and phase-encoding artifacts. Hardware issues may cause central point and RF overflow artifacts.

~~-<li><a href="/articles/inhomogeneity-artifacts">inhomogeneity artifact</a></li>~~
+<li>inhomogeneity artifact</li>
~~-<li><a title="Aliasing artifact" href="/articles/aliasing-in-mri">aliasing artifact</a></li>~~
~~-<li><a href="/articles/wrap-around-artifact">wrap around artifact</a></li>~~
+<li>
+<a href="/articles/aliasing-in-mri">aliasing artifact </a>(also known as <a href="/articles/aliasing-in-mri">wrap</a><a href="/articles/aliasing-in-mri"> around</a><a href="/articles/aliasing-in-mri"> artifact</a>)</li>

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