How does a MRI work?
The human body is made up of millions of atoms which are magnetic. When placed in a magnetic field, these atoms line up with the field, much like a compass points to the North Pole. Radio waves, tuned to a specific frequency, tip these tiny magnets away from the magnetic field. As they tip, they gain energy. When the radio waves are turned off, the atoms realign with the magnetic field, releasing the energy they gained as very weak radio signals. A powerful antenna picks up these signals and sends them to a computer that performs millions of calculations to produce an image for diagnosis. MRI is very sensitive to changes in cartilage and bone structure resulting from injury, disease or aging. The images at right illustrate the power of MRI in helping your doctor diagnose and treat your injury or illness. Clear images such as these often provide information not available through other medical testing and may actually eliminate the need for exploratory surgery. Our MRI offers maximum pat
MRI images are formed when signals, emitted by body tissue, are processed by software and turned into clinical images. These signals are generated using a safe magnettic field in combination with radio waves of a specific frequency. Different tissue characteristics are revealed through this process and translated into different contrast levels on the image.
To explain it simply an MRI is a giant magnet (that’s why you can’t have metal in the thing). When it gets turned on, what happens is that the rotation of the hydrogen atoms will shift all in one direction to match the magnetic field generated by the MRI. Things like hydrocarbons and water will show up differently because of their hydrogen spins. The different levels of light and darkness just show different levels of hydrogen. We can also add reagents into the body to take scans of specific things, like in angiograms, which track blood vessels.
