[Physical and technical bases for the use of magnetic resonance in radiological diagnosis]

This article describes the most important fundamentals of the application of MR to radiologic diagnostics--especially with regard to the tomographic measurements (MR-T) that, at present, provide many different and interesting clinical results. The properties of MR-sensitive nuclei are discussed together with their behavior in magnetic fields under the influence of radiofrequency energy. Technical problems such as slice definition, encoding and decoding of spatial information within the slice by the application of gradient fields, are also presented. This is then followed by some aspects of spectroscopic measurements (MR-S), including chemical shift and intensity relations within the spectra. Finally the most important characteristics of the different tomographic and spectroscopic apparatus are described.