Physics Lectures for Residents

MRI Artifact

Prof. J.K Tonui, PhD

School of Medicine,
Department of Radiology and Imaging.
 Learning Objectives
 At the end of this lecture, the student is expected to:

 Describe the causes of major artifacts in MR Images.

 Describe and understand how to reduce the various types of

artifacts in MR images:
o Motion artifact;

o Flow artifact;

o Metal artifact, and

o Aliasing or phase-warp artifact.

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 Introduction
 MR images

 Not only have excellent contrast resolution, but

 Are also riddled with many artifacts, hence

 It is important to recognize these artifacts and understand how

they are created and reduced/eliminated.

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 Image Artifacts
 MRI artifacts

 Refer to pixels that do not faithfully represent the anatomy being

studied, where
 Images of underlying anatomy are visible but are masked by
spurious signals that do not correspond to actual tissue at that
location, and
 The artifacts may or may not be easily discernible from normal
anatomy, particularly if they are of low intensities.

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 Classification of MRI Artifacts
 MRI artifacts are classified into 3-groups according to how

they are produced:

1. Patient related - physical motion of pt. and internal
physiological motion such as blood flow;
2. Signal processing dependent- either a measurement technique
or parameter, and
3. Hardware related - malfunction of a component of the MRI
equipment.
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 Types of MRI Artifacts
 Regardless of the origin, the common MRI artifacts are:
 Motion related artifacts;

 Para-magnetic artifacts ;

 Phase Wrap artifacts;

 Frequency artifacts;

 Susceptibility artifacts;

 Clipping artifact;

 Chemical Shift Artifact ;

 Spike artifact , and

 “Zebra” artifact .

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 Motion Artifacts
 Motion artifact

 Is one of the most common artefact in MR imaging, and

 It causes either a ghost image for periodic motion or a diffuse image

for random motion, usually in the phase-encoding (PE) direction,

and
 Is produced by any movement in the patient body (either

physical/physiological or voluntary/involuntray motions).

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 Motion Artifacts
 Motion artifacts

 Are caused by the movement of tissues during the data acquisition

period, and
 The specific appearance of the artifact depends on the nature of the

motion (random or periodic) and the particular measurement

technique, and
 Result from tissues excited at one location (voxel) but are mapped

and displayed at different location during detection/measurement.

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 Motion Artifacts

Periodic flow from the Random motion Periodic motion artifact

aorta will be misregistered artifact (blurred (ghost images).
as multiple ghosts (arrows). images)

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 Motion Artifacts
 Note that

 Motion in all 3-planes leads to ghosts or blurring in PE direction, because

 Patient motion is usually much slower than the fast sampling process along

FE direction (in ms), which

 Causes mild blurring motion artifacts in FE direction, but

 Sampling along PE direction needs all phase encoding steps, hence take

longer time in order of seconds, which

 Allows large amount of motion to take place resulting in disturbing artifacts.

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 Motion Artifacts
 Hence,

 Motion artifacts are caused by phase mis-mapping of the

protons, because
 Of the time-lapse between excitation and signal sampling,
which
 May cause the protons to move, due to respiration, pulsation
or other motions thro’ the gradient magnetic field, thus
acquiring an additional phase shift.

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 Motion Artifacts
 Fig.

 Shows a spin with a frequency of

21.3 MHz and a 0º phase moving
from right to left during the GPE,
 During this movement, the spin
changes frequency hence
 The phase changes also as compared
to its original position.

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 Motion Artifacts
 When the image is reconstructed,

 The position of the signal is put in the wrong place in the image,

but
 There are techniques, such as “flow compensation” or “cardiac

triggering” , that minimize or eliminate motion related artifacts.

 Note that

 Motion artifacts are displayed in the phase encoding direction.

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 Motion Artifacts
 Major causes of motion artefacts are:

 Esophageal contraction and vacular pulsation during head and

neck imaging.
 Respiration and cardiac activity during thoraic and abdominal

imaging,
 Bowel peristalasis during abdominal and pelvic imaging.

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 Motion Artifacts - Reduction
 Motion artefacts can be reduced by:

 Shortening the scan time by choosing smaller MXPE;

 Consider swapping phase and frequency directions to move

artifact away from area of interest;

 Patient immobilisation, and

 Increase the number of averagaing, etc.

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 Flow Artifacts
 Flow artifacts

 This is a special form of motion artifact, caused by flow of blood

or CSF, and
 Occur whenever magnetized protons flow into or out of the slice

being imaged, and

 Can be manifested as either:

o Altered intravascular signal (flow enhancement or flow-related signal

loss), or
o Flow-related artefacts (ghost images or spatial misregistration).
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 Flow Artifacts
 Flow enhancement,

 Is also known as inflow effect, and

 Is caused by fully magnetized protons entering the imaged slice

while the stationary protons have not fully regained their

magnetization, where
 The fully magnetized protons yield a high signal in comparison

with the rest of the surroundings.

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 Flow Artifacts
 Note that

 High velocity flow causes the protons entering the image to be removed

from it by the time the 180o pulse is administered, and

 The effect is that these protons do not contribute to the echo and are

registered as a signal void or flow-related signal loss as shown below.

Flow-related signal loss in the carotid and basillary

arteries (T2 axial study of the brain).
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 Flow Artifacts

(a) (b)

 (a) No flow compensation. Misregistration artifact from CSF

flow appears anterior to the spinal canal (arrow).
 (b) First-order flow compensation in readout and slice selection
directions. CSF is properly mapped into the spinal canal.
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 Flow Artifacts
 Spatial misregistration

 Manifests as displacement of an intravascular signal owing to

position encoding of a voxel in the PE direction preceding FE by

time TE/2, and
 The intensity of the artifact is dependent on the signal intensity

from the vessel, and is less apparent with increased TE.

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 Flow Artifacts - Reduction
 Flow artifacts

 Can be reduced using flow compensation, which

 Adds additional gradient pulses to the pulse sequence to correct

for phase shifts experienced by the moving protons, and

 Is also called gradient motion rephasing (GMR), or the motion

artifact suppression technique (MAST), and

 The amount of phase accumulation is related to the velocity of

the motion.
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 Metal Artifacts
 Metal artifacts

 Are also referred as paramagnetic artifacts, and

 Occur at interfaces of tissues with different-,which

 Cause local magnetic fields to distort the external Bo, which

 In turn, changes the precession or Lamor frequency in the

tissue leading to spatial mismapping of information.

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 Metal Artifacts
 The degree of distortion depends on:

 Type of metal (stainless steel having a greater distorting effect

than titanium alloy), and

 Type of interface (most striking effect at soft tissue-metal

interfaces), as well as
 The pulse sequence and imaging parameters.

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 Metal Artifacts
 Metal artifacts

 Are caused by external ferromagnetics , e.g. cobalt, iron, which

 May change resonance frequency beyond the range used in

MRI, and
 The protons will not react to the RF excitation pulse, and

 Manifestation of these artifacts is variable, including total signal

loss (i.e. black spots called blooming artifact), peripheral high

signal and image distortion.
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 Metal in Bone Artifacts

Blooming artifact or Peripheral high signal

black spots i.e. bright spot

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 Metal Artifacts

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 Metal Artifacts
 Note that

 Not all metals create such severe artifacts, but

 It depends on the amount of iron, where

 Very small pieces of iron, such as an iron splinter or surgical clips can

cause havoc to the image.

 Warning

 Screen pt. for metal implants before performing MRI, because

 The implants will ruin both image and pt.!

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 Metal Artifacts
 Note that

 Aluminium and titanium produce much less severe artifacts,

hence
 Patients with a titanium hip or knee implant can go into a MRI

scanner without any problem.

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 Metal Artifacts - Reduction
 Metal artifacts can be reduced by:

 Orientating the long axis of implant parallel to Bo;

 Choosing proper FE direction where this artifact is most common;

 Using smaller voxel sizes, fast imaging sequences, increased

readout bandwidth, and avoiding GE imaging when metal is

present, and
 Using MARS (metal artefact reduction sequence) which applies

addition gradient in GSS during FE is applied.

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 Aliasing Artifacts
 Aliasing artifacts

 Are also called phase-wrap or wrap-around or fold-over artifacts,

and

 Are caused by mis-mapping of anatomy that is outside the FOV

but within the slice, and

 They occur when the FOV is smaller than the anatomical slice

selected or being imaged, and

 Image is formed on the opposite side of the image.

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 Aliasing Artifacts
 Phase wrap artifacts

 Are caused by mis-mapping of phase, which

 Occurs when the FOV is smaller than the object, where

 The part of the body outside the FOV will be “wrapped around”

into the image, as shown in figures in next slide, but

 With the “NoWrap” or “Double Matrix” option switched on, this

artifact can be avoided, with a time penalty.

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 Aliasing Artifacts

Arrows show Phase Wrap artifacts and operator

forgot to turn on No Wrap button

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 Aliasing Artifacts - Reduction
 Elimination of aliasing artifacts:

 Use a larger FOV (called oversampling), or

 Use “no phase wrap” button

o This acquires data for a larger FOV and discards the data outside

your original FOV, but

o It takes 2x longer to do since it is done in the PE direction, unless

NEX is cut in half.

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 Aliasing Artifacts - Reduction
 Aliasing artifact

 Is caused by under sampling in PE direction, and

 Is eliminated by doubling the FOV,

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 Aliasing Artifacts - Reduction
 From the Fig. in previous slice,

 Aliasing in the readout direction occurs when tissue outside the

chosen FOVRO is excited, and

 Occurs when an FOVRO smaller than atomical slice selected, and

 The frequencies for this tissue exceed the Nyquist limit for the

sampling conditions and

 Are mapped to a lower frequency, a situation known as high-frequency

aliasing or frequency wraparound as shown in Fig. in next slide.

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 Aliasing Artifacts - Reduction
 Oversampling process

 Results in an increase

of the Nyquist
frequency for the
measurement as
shown in this Fig.

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 Aliasing Artifacts - Reduction
 No phase-wrap up technique

 Uses large FOV also to avoid no phase-wrap artifacts, where

o Finer k steps are used in PE direction, and

o Unwanted FOV is cut off, but

o Then doubles acquisition time!

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