Resumo

CANALS, Mauricio. THE HISTORY OF MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING FROM FOURIER TO LAUTERBUR AND MANSFIELD: IN SCIENCE NOBODY KNOWS WHOM HE WORKS FOR. Rev. chil. radiol. [online]. 2008, vol.14, n.1, pp. 39-45. ISSN 0717-9308.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0717-93082008000100009.

Magnetic resonance imaging has brought about a revolution in medicine, particularly in imagino-logy. In its process of development, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, engineers, and physicians made important contributions by working up seemingly unrelated concepts with no current usefulness to implement an impressive tecnique by joining together such diverse elements as Fourier and Radon Transforms; spin concept; nuclear spin; measurement of magnetic moments in protons, neutrons, condensed matter, and tissues; in the solving of integral equations; backprojection; diffusion; gradients; spatial encoding; K-space; double-pass Fourier transform, and image construction. As stated previously, it is highly interesting to notice that a wide variety of scienticic disciplines have played a vital role in the history of magnetic resonance and that apparently unrelated discoveries pertaining to different scientific fields-mostly without any immediate usefulness in their respective epoch-currently have been articulated to produce a revolution in patients study and diagnosing. Historical rercords of magnetic resonance constitute a vivid example of the game that goes "Nobody knows whom he works for"

Palavras-chave : Magnetic Resonante Imaging ; backprojection; medical imaging; Fourier and Radon Transforms.