The importance of quality assurance (QA) in MRI to ensure that accurate and reproducible image acquisition is well documented and has led to the production of national guidelines by the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM) and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM). Although these guidelines are somewhat dated in terms of the more advanced MRI sub-modalities (e.g. fMRI, DTI) and hardware developments (e.g. multi-channel coils), their principles of establishing a thorough QA protocol, through which specific measures of image quality can be assessed, are sound. Therefore BRIC has established robust QA procedures to ensure consistent and accurate scanner function.

Below are some QA tutorials

• fMRI

General Quality Assurance techniques:

• Routine (clinical) QA is performed each day.
• This form of QA is inadequate for research purposes.
• Each month, we carry out an extensive battery of tests on MRI phantoms.
• For some studies, specific QA may be required both prior to and after scanning a subject.

The tests carried out include signal to noise ratio(SNR), uniformity, single- and multi- voxel spectroscopy (MRS), and functional MRI (fMRI). The images are quantified and the results plotted so that we can spot any trends in scanner performance.

Another aspect of QA is that of repeatability. This is important for longitudinal studies. We are assessing repeatability by running a programme of studies on healthy volunteers.