Mansfield, Peter: transcript of a video interview (11- and 12-Jul-2007)

Abstract

Peter Mansfield, Nobel Laureate 2003, was responsible for some of the key advances leading to the development of MRI. He showed that when biological tissues were placed in a high magnetic field, gradients in that field reflected precise differences in the arrangement of hydrogen atoms in tissue water molecules, which could rapidly be analysed and transformed into an image, an essential step to obtain a practical diagnostic technique. His major contribution was to devise the universally used method for spatially encoding MRI signals to permit 3-dimensional imaging. Mansfield also showed that extremely rapid imaging could be achieved by very fast gradient variations (the so-called echo-planing imaging, EPI). This was a key component in developing medical scanners that became available a decade later.