MRI GLOSSARY/TERMINOLOGY Flashcards
any disease producing agent, especially a virus, bacterium or other
microorganism
Pathogen
the cause or origin of a disease
Etiology
refers to the practice, in medicine, of avoiding contact with patients’ bodily fluids, by means of the wearing of nonporous articles such as medical gloves, goggles and face shields, regardless of any known transmittable
diseases.
Universal Precautions
stage of disease when symptoms are not present.
Latent disease phase
Oral, sublingual, or rectal delivery
Enteral
Intravenous (IV), Intramuscular (IM), Subcutaneous (SC);
any route other than by mouth (PO) or rectal
Parenteral
infections acquired during a hospital stay or while
receiving some type of medical treatment.
Nosocomial infections
is an object that carries microorganisms from one person to another via
indirect contact.
A fomite
Diseases, such as malaria, in which microorganisms are transferred via an insect, come under the classification of
Vector borne infections
is a white blood cell.
A leukocyte
occurs when microorganisms enter the body and fluids carrying white blood cells travel to the site to destroy them.
Phagocytosis
The source of infection where pathogens thrive in numbers sufficient to cause a threat is known as a
reservoir
the removing or killing of most microorganisms
Medical asepsis
the removing or killing of all microorganisms completely
Surgical asepsis
“the thing speaks for itself”, or, a doctrine or legal ruling that permits the presumption that a defendant was negligent even without direct evidence of how any defendant behaved.
Res Ipsa Loquitur
“let the master answer” is a legal doctrine which states that, in many circumstances, an employer is responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their employment.
Respondeat Superior
“not to pick up something” is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances.
Negligence
professional negligence by act or omission by a health care provider in which the treatment provided falls below the accepted standard of practice in the medical community and causes injury or death to the patient, with most cases involving medical error, simply defined as a failure to render proper services through reprehensible ignorance or negligence
Medical malpractice
in common law jurisdictions, is a wrong that involves a breach of
a civil duty (other than a contractual duty) owed to someone else. It is
differentiated from a crime, which involves a breach of a duty owed to
society in general.
**And may be defined as a personal injury; or as “a civil action other than a breach of contract.”
A Tort
law that pertains to private legal rights and matters
Civil law
law that pertains to crimes and their punishment
Criminal law
a crime that is punishable by a fine and/or up to one year
in jail
Misdemeanor
a crime that is punishable by a fine and prison time that can exceed one year in jail
Felony
a medical or psychological treatment guideline, and can be general or specific.
A standard of care
event or reaction is one caused by a medical professional, whether it be negligence, drug interactions, or even erroneous medical advice.
An iatrogenic
can mean something that is a hindrance or puts an individual
or group at a disadvantage, or something that someone is responsible
for, or something that increases the chance of something occurring.
A liability
In law a person is said to be legally _______ when they are financially and
legally responsible for something
Liable
a controversial form of consent which is not expressly granted by a person, but rather inferred from a person’s actions and the facts and circumstances of a particular situation (or in some cases, by a person’s silence or inaction).
Implied consent
is a phrase often used in law to indicate that the consent a person gives meets certain minimum standards.
Informed consent
is an instrument (or document) that allows a patient to appoint an agent to make health care decisions in the event that the primary individual is incapable of executing such decisions.
A Health Care Proxy
is to only do good and to prevent evil or harm.
Beneficence
a term describing the containment of the static magnetic fringe field through the use of secondary coils attached around the MRI scanner
Active shielding
a term used to describe the adjustment of the current within the shim coils on a per/patient or per/sequence basis, for the purposes of achieving uniform fat suppression or optimal prescan calibrations. A well shimmed FID is the desired end result of a good active shim calibration
Active shimming
are reconstructed from diffusion weighted images with multiple bvalues, and correspond to the spatially distributed diffusion coefficients of the
target tissues
ADC images
occurs when tissue outside the Field of View is undersampled, causing a misregistration of anatomical location, in the phase direction, but on the opposite side of the anatomical location, also known as wrap-around artifact
Aliasing artifact
equates to signal height or strength; the larger the amplitude, the
larger the number of protons
Amplitude
being continuous, or having a continuous range of values
Analog
is part of the computer system that converts the analog acquired MR signal into a digital signal
Analog-to-digital converter (ADC)
is a voxel with uneven measurements, with regards to the phase, frequency and slice thickness dimensions
anisotropic voxel
comprises a multiprocessor that is switched in sequence and in
parallel while simultaneously performing a computing task
array processor
are signal misrepresentations that do not correspond to the spatial
location of the specific tissue imaged
Artifacts
is defined as the range or spectrum of frequencies (minimum to
maximum processed frequency) of a pulse sequence acquired by an RF system
Bandwidth
is an integrated part of the magnet design that acts as its own transceiver coil, with large FOV capabilities, but lacking the high SNR of localized coils
The body coil
is defined as a factor in diffusion weighted imaging; the higher the factor, the stronger the diffusion weighting
The b-value
is defined as the static main magnetic field of an MR system
The B^0
field
is the alternating magnetic field generated by the RF in a transceiver
coil, perpendicular to B0
The B1field
prevents or reduces motion artifacts in the MR image caused by
the heartbeat or pulsating blood flow and enables the images to be acquired
synchronized to cardiac movement
Cardiac triggering
is due to the difference in resonant frequencies between fat and water, causing a phase shift in voxels containing fat and water.
Chemical shift artifact
function scrolls through the entire sequence’s images, giving the appearance of CSF flowing or cardiac movement, from the cycling of the images acquired; a “movie” function of scrolling images
the Cine
the physiological reaction to being confined in a small space or location, the fear of being trapped
Claustrophobia
maintaining a constant state of “in-phase” relationships between protons; located at the same phase cycle simultaneously
Coherent –
can be defined as the signal strength differences between two adjacent
tissue types
CONTRAST
utilizes the reduced T1 relaxation time of blood through the use of an intravenously injected Gadolinium contrast agent
CE MRA (Contrast-enhanced MR angiography)
Circularly polarized transmission or receiver coil with two orthogonal
transmission and/or receiver channels, also known as a quadrature coil. This yields better signal-to-noise than a linear coil
CP COIL
occurs when slices are positioned too close together, causing signals from adjacent slices to affect one another. This affects T1 contrast, and is remedied by utilizing an interleaved slice profile or by increasing slice gap
Cross-talk artifact
are the liquids that are supercooled (4° Kelvin) in order to maintain the
superconductivity of the magnet coils
Cryogens
Formula for the temporal change of the magnetic field, especially
important with regards to patient safety in relation to gradients. This is due to the electrical field generated in conductive materials, as in human tissue
dB/dt
occurs after initial RF application, causing phase differences to appear
between precessing spins, resulting in decay of transverse magnetization
Dephasing
is an effect resulting in a slightly weakened magnetic field when a
substance is introduced into it. This material is considered to have a negative
magnetic susceptibility
Diamagnetism
the movement of atoms or molecules from an area of higher
concentration to an area of lower concentration. (Brownian motion)
Diffusion
displays the mobility of water molecules in all three
coordinates
Diffusion tensor
A technique utilizing the differences in resonant frequencies of fat and
water separating the two tissues, acquiring each separately, then adding the two to yield a water-only image (fat suppression), then subtracting the two to yield a fat-only image
DIXON
A spin echo sequence with two echoes, two generated images per
slice location
Double Echo
The time which the gradient system can be run at maximum power
DUTY CYCLE
Basic T1 perfusion imaging (pituitary or prostate dynamic sequences, longer acquisition times/dynamic compared to DSC)
Dynamic Contrast Enhancement – refers to DCE,
better known as T2* gradient echo Perfusion imaging, utilized in Brain Perfusion studies
Dynamic Susceptibility Contrast – refers to DSC
The MR signal generated by an RF or a gradient pulse
ECHO
Very fast MR imaging technique where the complete image is acquired using a single selective excitation pulse, field gradients are periodically switched to generate a series of gradient echoes
Echo Planar Imaging
Distance between two echoes, as in Fast Spin Echo or EPI sequences. The shorter the echo spacing, the more compact the sequence timing and few artifacts result
Echo Spacing
The time between the excitation pulse of a sequence and the resulting echo used as the MR signal
Echo Time (TE)
Multiple echoes in sequence, each obtaining rows of k-space, shortening overall scan time, also reducing SNR with each additional echo train
Echo Train
The electrical currents generated in a conductor by changing
magnetic fields or movement of the conductor within the magnetic field
Eddy Currents