Law of attraction: the birth of MRI

Nuclear magnetic resonance, also known as NMR, or just MR, is a technique of non-invasive diagnostic imaging developed in the 1980s. Unlike to radiography, CT and nuclear medicine, MR does not use ionising radiation or radioactive substances.

The development of magnetic resonance would not have been possible without the mathematical principles of the complex equation called Fourier’s “transform”, introduced by Richard Ernst in 1975. This complex formula is one the most important ideas that have driven forward technological progress over the last 200 years. Without it, there would be no TV, telephone, radio transmission or computer. The “transform” decomposes a wave into its constituent parts and then recomposes it. The discovery of the “transform” is historically attributed to the brilliant French mathematician Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, who lived in the Napoleonic period. Orphaned at ten years old, he had an amazingly adventurous life. He was Napoleon’s friend and a pioneer in mathematics, physics, Egyptology and diplomacy.

First used in biochemical research in the early 1980s, magnetic resonance was only later employed for diagnosis. This was the result of a series of progressive discoveries made by numerous scientists, who from the 1940s onwards marked the stages of this innovation.

The principals of nuclear magnetic resonance are also applied in other fields. In chemistry magnetic resonance allows the determination of molecular structure and enables the study of chemical reactions. And the use of magnetic resonance imaging in a lie detector shows the cerebral regions activated by the answers of the subject. Magnetic resonance imaging is a technique that is continually and rapidly evolving: it will surely open new and unexpected opportunities for early diagnosis.