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Cautionary Note — Plagiarism and Infringement of Copyright. Increasingly our publications are copied and used illegally. The Foundation reserves all rights with respect to copyright and trademark ownership of all material at this site and its other printed and digital publications, and will enforce such rights to the full extent of applicable law – even if this means high legal fees and fines for the perpetrator and possibly the end of an academic career.

EMRF: Fundamentals and Applications to Medical Imaging

plethora of scien­ti­fic pub­li­ca­tions: Teach­ing ma­ter­ial, books of ab­stracts, pro­ceed­ings of con­fe­ren­ces, as well as re­com­men­da­tions for the cli­ni­cal use of MR imag­ing, diction­aries of mag­ne­tic re­son­ance terms, col­lect­ed lect­ures on me­di­cal ethics — and much more — have ap­pear­ed during the last 40 years.

It all started with print­ed lec­ture notes ac­com­pany­ing the early EMRF Work­shops and scien­ti­fic journals issues de­di­cat­ed to the pro­ceed­ings of con­fe­ren­ces.

The standard language of all these publications is English. Most other editions are translations from the English.

However, some books were published in other languages only, e.g., an MR dicti­o­nary and a book sum­ma­riz­ing in­di­ca­tions for MR imag­ing for a German-speak­ing audi­ence.

Magnetic Resonance in Medicine

he textbook Magnetic Resonance in Medicine became the most popular publication. Many thousand copies of this standard textbook were sold worldwide in English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.

With this book readers should be able to acquire a fundamental knowledge that enables them to pursue studies of their own and to cope with some of the most common problems, such as image contrast and artifacts or questions concerning possible hazards to patients.

The first version of this primer — a little booklet — was written at Paul C. Lau­ter­bur's laboratories in the early 1980s. Lauterbur was the father of MR imaging and received the Nobel Prize twenty years later. The text was intended to be used as the Basic Text­book for EMRF, the European Magnetic Resonance Fo­rum.

After Lauterbur saw the first edition, he commented:

"It looks like a fine book, especially for residents, nurses, and technicians."

We worked on it for another twenty years — and finally Lau­ter­bur found the last edition he read before his death gratifying.

However, the target audience today includes scientists and university professors. They should be able to acquire a basic knowledge which enables them to pursue studies of their own and to cope with some of the most common problems, among them tissue relaxation, image con­trast and artifacts or questions concerning possible hazards to patients — and to become aware of how to perform reliable research, and to ask and be critical.

Many organizers of teaching courses and universities the world over found the textbook valuable for their students.

The sixth edition of the textbook was turned into an e-Learning Textbook: magnetic-resonance.org. More than one year of demanding work resulted in a new website with about 320 pages and several hundred figures and animations.

With far more than one and a helf million page views, the e-Learning website continues to be one of the most at­tract­ive online learn­ing plat­forms to study the fun­da­mentals of a scientific discipline. The English and Spanish versions as well as the Chinese beta-version were released to­ge­ther with an updated 11th English version in 2017.

The 12th edition of the textbook was published in print again in 2018, with a corrected 13th edition in 2022. The 14th — e-Learning — edition was published in 2024, updated in 2025; a new Spanish edition is planned for 2026. Chinese and German editions were discontinued.

Electronic Publications

mong the first electronic publications were teaching videos, and slide-based CD-ROMs with chapter-by-chapter teaching courses and clinical MR presentations. The production of video teaching courses was labor-intensiv and time-consuming and the contents became out-dated rapidly; once again "life" teaching courses and books proved their superiority.

The first interactive CD-ROM followed in co­opera­tion with Philips Medical Systems in 2001, containing some synthetic and clinical MR images produced with the soft­ware MR Image Expert.

MR Image Expert: Image and Data Simulation Software

his simulation software was developed into a product in the late 1980s and 1990s by Peter A. Rinck and Geir Torheim. Rinck's group had pre­sent­ed the idea of synthetic MR images and si­mu­lat­ing entire MR exams in the early 1980s at a con­fe­ren­ce in the United States.

More than 12,000 copies of MR Image Expert were made available, many of them as in­ser­tions of the multi­langu­age TRTF-EMRF Text­books. The program simulates MR examinations and can be used for teaching, and image processing in research, e.g., contrast agent studies. While developing the software, it became clear the (even today) sometimes proposed fingerprinting based on multiparametric data collection is unreliable in diagnostic routine.

Synthetic images should not be used in clinical examinations to quantify data (e.g., relaxation constants or proton density in tissues).

MR imaging is one of the intellectually most demanding and challenging medical technologies. Understanding the mechanisms that influence and change image contrast in MR imaging, in particular the relations between image contrast and pulse sequences and their parameters, is difficult and often requires much intuition and imagination. While the diagnostic and clinical use of tissue mapping is extremely limited due to its inherent flaws, the method is extremely handy for teaching.

Find more about the scientific background and scientific references of this "quantitative" pro­cess­ing of magnetic resonance data (non-invasive tissue characterization, tissue mapping, or "fin­ger­print­ing") in the e-Learning Textbook.

The best MRI tea­cher close to cli­ni­cal real­ity is a real-time si­mu­la­tor such as MR Image Expert.

Based on pre­ci­se­ly ac­quir­ed T1 and T2 re­la­xa­tion time and pro­ton den­si­ty values, MR Image Expert creates synthetic magnetic resonance images and can be applied to reliably simulate all steady state pulse sequences.

Animated simulations created with MR Image Expert are included in the e-Learning Textbook. Check, for instance, more examples on this web page of the e-Textbook.

Breach of License Agreement. Because MR Image Expert was plagiarized illegally by a number of companies, the software is not available any more on the open market. We deeply regret this move, but we do not work and invest in free educational material for the benefit of commercial plagiators.

TRTF: Periodicals and an Open Platform

Rinckside

Rinckside, the more than 35 years old column on “Imaging, Science, and Beyond” was integrated into TRTF some years ago. Rinckside was published several times per year at irregular intervals both in an electronic and a printed version and is an officially citable scientific journal — small, but present. It is listed by the German National Library as a serial publication, and registered with the ISSN International Center in Paris. A Digest Version adapted to their readership appeared as "Maverinck" on the website Aunt Minnie Europe. Since 2025, there won't be any new regular columns on this website, but readers will be able to read occasional thoughts.

It is a unique and independent platform to stress points Europe-wide — and beyond. The reader may not agree with the contents of the articles — sometimes even the author does not agree with them. But the aim is to provoke discussion and change of certain developments and behaviors, and in this the articles have been successful.

Over time, some articles were discussed quietly, some provoked major internal exchange of confidential letters and e-mails within and between professional bodies and companies (of which the author sometimes get copies), and after many years, when the subversion did not die a natural death and threats did not shut Rinckside up, the number of Letters-to-the-Editor increased. Any critical response, negative or positive, was a success — the topic was not kept under wraps any more, but publicly discussed. Some politicians made reference to Rincksides in parliamentary debates, radiological societies adapted their politics, learned journals even changed their layout.

A Small Café

he re-or­ga­ni­za­tion of TRTF opened up for a wider range of pub­li­ca­tions. The new plat­form A Small Café allows on-line publication in several languages of presentations of Pro Academia Prize recipients and of books and essays by friends and collaborators of TRTF. It is meant to be a plea­sant and inspiring small virtual academic meeting place on literature, philosophy, criti­cism, chron­icles, discourse and debate and open to a wide range of authors.

For some time now, we missed a plat­­form on the web, a plea­s­ant and in­spir­ing small sect­ion on li­ter­ature, philo­sophy, cri­ti­­cism, chron­i­cles, and, hope­fully, cle­ver state­­ments, dis­course and de­bate.

In other words, a kind of old-style coffee house; not for the hoi polloi but for the discerning few. So we introduce you to life at our and your vir­tual Small Café, serving a little distraction from the daily grind, among other things.

A Small Café, some tables in a friendly atmos­phere, corners and niches for quiet conver­sa­tions or reading, engaging and likeable people. A bar and a fireplace for the cold months. No cell­phones, no tablets. And, what's important on war­mer days, some tables outside in the sun (or shade) of the day or in the candlelight of the evening and night.

New patrons are always wel­come and the café's waiter will serve you with pleasure: "Enjoy." We hope this spot will become a relaxing surprise to spend a break, some minutes over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine — to meet old and new friends.

… and all guests are welcome to talk the language of their choice.