ABSTRACT
Artifacts are aberrant features of an image which are not present in the original imaged object. Magnetic resonance microscopy suffers from the same artifacts as magnetic resonance imaging. Magnetic susceptibility artifacts are caused by large magnetic susceptibility differences at interfaces between different types of materials. Chemical shift artifacts are due to differences in the resonance frequencies of spins located in different chemical environments. Aliasing or wrap-around artifacts happen when the size of the imaged object is larger than the defined field-of-view (FOV). Clipping artifacts, also known as Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) overflow artifacts, occur when the received signal is larger than the maximum ADC value. This clipping leads to loss in low frequency data, occurring in the center of k-space where the signal reaches its maximum value. Zipper artifacts appear as bright lines along the phase encoding axis. They are caused by unwanted radiofrequency signals produced by external sources such as monitoring systems, radio stations, flickering light bulbs, etc.
