Fast MR imaging: techniques and clinical applications.

Fast MR imaging has matured in the past few years and is now of established value for several aspects of clinical MR imaging. The initial impetus for rapid imaging was to reduce scan times. Today its usefulness includes reducing motion artifacts, improved contrast per unit time, three-dimensional (3-D) imaging, real-time imaging, cine-mode imaging, and flow imaging. The focus of this review is on short-TR steady-state gradient-echo imaging. We …