Lecture

1 - The Origin of Signal, Noise, and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Outline
- Signal
o Image content
- Noise
o Image degradation
- SNR
o Image Quality

SIGNAL

- X-Ray: properties of tissue determine attenuation and receptor picks up transmission
- MRI: tissues emit radio waves which are detected by coil which are turned into an image

Origin of MAGNETIC Resonance Signal
- Magnetism
o Magnetic objects can attract other magnetic objects
o A magnet lines up with an external magnetic field
§ i.e. compass
o Movement of a magnet (like spinning) causes an electrical current to be generated
(Faraday’s Law)
- How do bar magnets related to MRI?
o Water molecules are like tiny bar magnets
§ If you spin a water molecule around, it will generate an electrical signal
- HOW DO WE GET WATER TO BEHAVE LESS RANDOMLY?
o Place the water molecules in an external magnetic field (bringing order to the system and
having them all point the same way)
§ Zeeman splitting (looking at quantum mechanical explanation) where the EMF
applied causes parallel and anti-parallel orientations as there are two spin states (up
and down) and more go to up state (the proportion that do this is dependent on tissue
properties - i.e. tissue susceptibilities)
o The external magnetic field in an MR points down the bore of the unit (towards the feet)
§ Earths field 10-4T
§ MRI (typically) 1.5T (note that this field generated by these magnets is more
powerful and more uniform - this is why MR is so expensive, the magnets are high
quality superconductors)
- HOW DO WE GET WATER TO “SPIN”?
o This normally happens in a heterogeneous manner (consider a large group of water
molecules in a voxel)
§ Signal cancels out
o When the water molecules are in the EMF (external magnetic field, Bo), we apply an RF pulse
(radiofrequency)
§ Tips the water magnetization away from the main magnetic field by a “flip angle” ϕ
§ The water magnetization “spins” around the main magnetic field
• An electrical signal (due to Faraday’s Law) is generated which can be
detected by a coil

Additional comments
- MRI signal and pulse sequences
o A pulse sequence is a series of operations (RF pulses, gradient waveforms) that are executed
in a specific order on an MR scanner (we can see these on time diagrams)
§ RF is applied (1. Magnetic alignment changes THEN 2. Protons precess)
§ Gradient is applied
o As we increase field strength, signal is increased
 § The signal generated is proportion to the rotational speed
§ The speed of rotation is proportion to the magnetic field strength (twice the field
strength, twice the spin speed, twice the signal)
• @ 1.5T, water magnetic dipoles rotate at 63MHz (at 3T, it will spin at
125MHz)
§ FREQUENCY
o γ =42.5*10^6 MHz/T is associated with a hydrogen (the constant
will change depending on the target atom/tissue type)

Gyromagnetic ratio*field strength = γ*Bo

§ Only 1 in 10^6 water molecules aligns with the RMF
• Rest of the water molecules are randomly oriented
§ The number of molecules aligned is proportional to the EMF
• The signal increase with the magnetic field strength

- Summary
o Rotation speed is prop to MFS
o The number of Molecules aligned with the MF is prop to the MFS
§ Signal is roughly equal to MFS^2

NOISE
- Something we don’t want

What is noise?
- Noise is random fluctuations that is superimposed on top of an image
o Occurs in all imaging modalities (X-ray, US, PET, etc.)
- Random fluctuation magnetic forces inside the body
o Picked up by the coil
o Same mechanism as signal generation à Therefore, can’t complete get rid of noise
o Noise ~ MFS (Magnetic Field Strength)

SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO (SNR)
- Background (in the context of MRI)
o SNR = Signal/Noise
§ High SNR = Good
§ Low SNR = Bad
o The higher the SNR, the easier lesion detectability
- Contrast to Noise ration (CNR)
o Contrast: Signal1- Signal2
o Contrast to noise: S1-S2/Noise
o What is CNR important
§ Lesion detectability ~ Signal/Noise (this isn’t the case as tissue are in the region of
the entity we want to see)
§ Lesion detectability is actually = (S1-S2/Noise)
• Low CNR will make even a good SNR useless
§ In MRI, the relative signal between objects can be varied
• CNR, and therefore lesion detectability, can be varied by alternating various
MR parameters
§ Moral of the story is the SNR is important BUT NOT THE WHOLE STORY
- SNR and MFS
o SNR = S/N
§ S ~MFS^2
§ N ~ MFS
 § Therefore S/N ~MFS
o The SNR at 3T is twice that at 1.5T
§ Ignoring other effects such as relaxation, etc.
- Non-water signal in MRI
o Water behaves like a bard magnet (as it has a dipole moment)
o Other molecules also possess magnetic dipole moments (13C, 19F, 31P, 23NA)
o Can do MRI of non-water species
§ Weak signal due to low concentration inside the body
§ Rotation speed may be lower àlower signal
• What hardware would we need
o Higher field strength

From On-line Module
- SNR is calculated by taking the signal from a homogenous ROI and dividing the standard deviation of
signal from this ROI
- Electronic noise in MRI:
o Body/Object (random motion of electrons in the body being imaged)
o RF Coil
o Receiver electronics
- Noise is Gaussian distributed (these fluctuations cause random fluctuations in MR signal - appears as
white noise in the image)
o Images of lower SNR appear nosier than of higher SNR

- Noise can be reduced by averaging repeat acquisitions
- Noise variance (σ2) resulting from averaging works out to:

σ2av= (σ21 + σ 22 + ….)/NEX

- The standard deviation of the noise (square root of the variance) is inversely proportional to the
square root of the number of averages (in order to double the SNR, the number of acquisitions needs
to be quadrupled)
- Another way to increase the SNR would be to decrease the spatial resolution
o Example: FOV=25cm and matrix is changed from 256x256x256 to 128x128x128, the
old and new spatial resolution will be about 1mm and 2mm isotropic
o Resolution = FOV dimension/Matrix
o 3D sequences FOB is defined for a slab in 3D
o By convention, the direction along the length of the magnetic bore is z
o For a 2D sequence, on dimension is defined by a slice thickness. The other two dimensions
are defined by a FOV and corresponding matrix size.
- Decrease the spatial resolution from 1mm isotropic to 2mm isotropic results in an increase in SNR by
8 times
o Each pixel on an MR images comes from signal from a cube (volume element/voxel)
o Larger voxels have more “stuff” which generates more signal
o Halving the resolution increases the voxel VOLUME by 8x
o SNR increased by 8x at a cost of lower spatial resolution
 o



- Example: Assuming that the predominant source of noise is from body dominated noise, the relative
increase in signal, nose and SNR at 3T versus 1.5T will be: 4x signal, 2x noise, 2x SNR.
o Strong mag field Bo first causes protons spins in sample to align with or against the
field
o A small excess of spins align with the field giving a net magnetization Mz
o A RF coil then excites the magnetization causing to rotate into the transverse plane (xy
plane)
o Once in the transverse plane, the magnetization processes about the z-axis
o This causes a changes in the magnetic field of the RF coil and induces a oscillating electric
current within it
o This current, the MR signal, decrease exponentially over time
o Increasing the mag field strength does two things to increase signal
o 1. Increasing field increases magnitude of Mx (more proton spins)
o 2. Increasing field increases rate of precession of Mxy (transverse plane)
§ Both of these change the strength of magnetic flux within the RF coil increasing
signal
o 3. Increase field increases electronic noise
- We know that SNR is proportional to the square root of the NEX. The 2x increase in SNR at 3T can be
used to reduce the NEXT by a factor of 4 according to this relationship.
- EXAMPLE: You decide that you have sufficient SNR on your old 1.5T scan to make a diagnosis of an
osteochondral injury and want to reduce the SNR of the 3T scan to reduce scan time. Assuming that
the SNR of the 3T scan is twice that of the 1.5T scan, the acquisition time of the #t scan can be
reduced by a factor of FOUR to match the SNR at 1.5T

CASE 3
- EXAMPLE: You are reading an MR abdomen on a patient with cirrhosis. At your institution, the T2
weighted sequence provides images at two echo times (TE=80 and TE = 160ms). What will the SNR
of the image with a TE=160ms be compared to the images with a TE=80ms
o LOWER
o The MR signal decays exponentially with time. The SNR at TE of 160ms will be lower
compared to TE of 80ms.
- Contrast is calculated by subtracting the signal of the lesion from the signal from the background
tissue
 - Contrast improves with increasing TE because the signal decay in the background decays faster
compared to the lesion
- Contrast to noise ratio (CNR) is calculated by dividing contrast by the standard deviation of
background noise.
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