Analysis of acoustic noise in MRI

Acoustic or sound noise due to gradient pulsing has been one of the problems in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), both in patient scanning as well as in many areas of psychiatric and neuroscience research such as functional MRI. Our recent observations in functional MRI for the visual and motor cortex show very different results with sound noise in comparison with the results obtained without sound noise. Although a number of ideas have been suggested in the literature about the possible elimination or reduction of sound noise, progress has been slow due to the basic role of gradient pulsing in MR imaging. Before we tackle the sound-noise-reduction problem, we believe that a systematic study of sound or acoustic noise behavior will provide important information for future endeavors in this area of research in MRI systems, in both commercial and research systems. Therefore, we report on some typical behavior of sound noise observed from MRI scanners and the analyses of their characteristics. Data are obtained both from a commercial MRI scanner (GE Signa 1.5-T EPI system) as well as a research-type MRI scanner (KAIS 2.0-T) developed at a university laboratory setting.