ABSTRACT
Artifacts appear in MRI for a variety of reasons. They appear as signals or voids in the images that do not have an anatomic basis, or are the result of distortion, addition, or deletion of information. They can degrade images sufficiently to cause inaccurate diagnosis. Many MR artifacts are neither obvious nor understandable from previous experience with conventional imaging MRI. While some artifacts are scanner specific, the majority are inherent in the physics or method of MRI imaging. For this reason, books dealing with MRI often contain chapters devoted to most common artifacts in MRI and to their sources. With a deep understanding of their cause, most MRI artifacts can be corrected, minimized, or avoided, through appropriate action during data acquisition or the reconstruction stage. This requires familiarity with scanner design, physical processes, and image acquisition.
