MAGNETIC RESONANCE IN MEDICINE 27, 398-399 ( 1992)

Book Reviews

Magnetic Resonance Test and Syllabus, William G. Bradley, Jr. (Editor). American College of Radiology, Reston, Virginia, 199 1. 658 pp.

This book is the 3 1 st volume in the “Professional Self-Evaluation and Continuing Education” series published by the American College of Radiology ( ACR) . Over the past two decades this series has been an acclaimed vehicle for education and self- assessment in radiology. Each volume in the series contains a self-evaluation test, followed by a substantial syllabus that provides the correct answers and rationale for each of the questions. The syllabus also provides a short review of the topic of each series of questions in the test, complete with appropriate references. Readers of “Mag- netic Resonance Test and Syllabus” can receive 20 h of Category I Continuing Edu- cation credit from the ACR by completing a test answer sheet which is included with the volume.

This volume is one of the few modality-oriented editions in the “Professional Self- Evaluation” series, but its contents confirm the need for such a focus. Most MRI examinations depict multiple-organ systems. Furthermore, the basic technical knowl- edge that is mandatory for proper performance and interpretation of MRI is applicable to all examinations, regardless of the organ system.

The syllabus contains a series of images and questions pertaining to head, spine, thoracic, abdominal, pelvic, and extremity imaging. The book emphasizes topics in these areas that are often not well addressed in organ-oriented works, including many of the pitfalls of interpretation in clinical MRI.

MRI is not yet a mature modality. It is therefore not surprising that readers who are active in the field may find that they disagree with some of the “correct answers” provided in the syllabus. Nevertheless, the volume is an outstanding educational work for those new to MRI and a unique self-evaluation opportunity for radiologists already working in the area.

RICHARD L. EHMAN

Magnetic Resonance Imaging Techniques, Ajay M. Parikh. Elsevier, New York, 1992. 349 pp.

In its 20 years of existence MRI has rapidly developed a remarkable alphabet soup of acronyms. Hardly an issue of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine goes by without adding further to the confusion. Ajay Parikh has taken on the heroic task of collating these sometimes colorfully named imaging techniques, putting them in alphabetical order, and giving a brief description of each, with a summary of applications and a list of advantages and disadvantages.

398 0740-3 194192 $5.00 Copyright 0 1992 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

BOOK REVIEWS 399

The list, extending from BEPI (Blipped Echo-Planar Imaging) to UNSAD (UNderSAmpling of Data), is unavoidably incomplete, though a commendable effort has been made to mention all synonyms-which are common, given the propensity of manufacturers of imaging equipment to rename a technique that they have just copied from a competitor. A curious effect of this “snapshot in time” listing is to give equal prominence to esoteric methods pursued by only one team of investigators that will never be widely used, to standard workhorse methods, and to new techniques with major implications for tissue characterization, such as magnetization transfer contrast.

The author has taken a curious editorial stance regarding advantages and disad- vantages. Much of the time he uncritically repeats the virtues claimed for a sequence by its originators, presented as the professional consensus, while on certain unpre- dictable occasions he expresses his own judgments, which can be poorly informed. For instance, Parikh comments that the image SNR for echo-planar imaging is low. For comparable imaging times (which usually implies image averaging for EPI), in fact, the SNR of EPI is higher than that of many other techniques, because a larger proportion of the signal available from each FID is sampled. The comments on other techniques suffer from a similar superficiality, and it would have been wiser for the author not to have attempted to summarize the relative benefits of the various tech- niques he describes, always a contentious arena. The book could be seriously misleading for a somewhat naive reader.

Given the great number of diagrams, it is inevitable that some should be poor. When a simple time variation is sketched, it costs no extra work to give it some resemblance to the expected mathematical form. Several do not clarify one’s under- standing, which is the main point of a diagram.

All things considered, however, the book works well as a handy reference, if all the reader wishes to know is what sort of a pulse sequence and what sort of application a particular acronym signifies.

ROBERT TURNER