Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting

A new dimension in quantitative MRI

Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting
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The MRF technique does not acquire traditional clinical images, but instead is designed to gather tissue information based on the signal evolution for voxels. Acquisition parameters are varied in a pseudorandom fashion, and the signal evolutions are recorded and collected in a database or ‘dictionary’. After the acquisition, a pattern recognition algorithm is used to find the dictionary entry that best represents the acquired signal evolution of each voxel. The signal evolutions equate in many ways to ‘fingerprints’ of tissue properties, which, like the identification of human fingerprints in forensics, can only be analyzed by comparing them with a file containing all known fingerprints. The dictionary is equivalent to the database where all the known fingerprints are stored, together with all the information relative to each person. In the forensic case, each fingerprint points to the feature identification of the associated person such as name, height, weight, eye color, date of birth, etc. In the case of MRF, each fingerprint in the dictionary points to the MR related identification features of the associated tissue (such as T1, T2, relative spin density, B0, diffusion, etc.).

"A potentially new, disruptive approach to clinical diagnostic imaging with the potential to quantitatively detect and analyze complex changes that can represent physical alterations of a substance or early indications of disease."1

Designed to be motion-insensitive

MRF has the potential to be less sensitive to motion in comparison to conventional MR acquisition techniques.

1Ma, D. Magnetic resonance fingerprinting. Nature, 495, 188-193. 2013.

Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting is currently under development. It is not for sale in the U.S. and other countries. Its future availability cannot be guaranteed. As this is a research topic in predevelopment, all results shown are preliminary in nature and do not allow for generalizations or conclusions to be drawn. Product realization and features therein cannot be assured as the product may undergo futher design iterations.