Object‐Oriented Magnetic: Resonance Classes and Objects, Calculations and Computations

Abstract

Object-Oriented Magnetic: Resonance Classes and Objects, Calculations and Computations Michael Mehring and Volker A. Weberruβ Academic Press London 555, $79.95 Text ISBN: 0-12-740620, CD-ROM ISBN: 0-12-740621-2 Chris A. Flask*, * Department of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology Case Western Reserve University University Hospitals of Cleveland. Object-Oriented Magnetic Resonance by Mehring and Weberruβ presents an operator-based analysis of fundamental spin physics and extends those principals to both established NMR and ESR techniques and newer applications such as spin quantum computing. The book was intended primarily for structural biologists, chemists, and physicists interested in spin systems and dynamics. However, MRI physicists and engineers may also find the book useful in providing a review of NMR/ESR techniques that may be adapted to both clinical and research imaging needs to provide tools for understanding human and animal physiology. The book assumes substantial prior knowledge of spin physics and the various NMR/ESR applications from simple spin echoes to the more complex multiple-quantum spectroscopy, but the sections of the book are well-referenced to guide the reader to more fundamental reading. Essential for any book with such complex subject matter, the authors have also provided a notation section before the first chapter to assist the reader in understanding the complex formalisms to follow. The book begins with a chapter describing the authors' motivation in generating this text. The bulk of the text is organized into 3 main segments: fundamentals of spin physics (Ch 2-6), magnetic resonance (Ch 7-14), and a “complementary” section providing some useful analytical and numerical techniques (Ch 15), information on public domain NMR software (GAMMA, Ch 16), and concise lists of objects and operators defined throughout the text (Ch 17). In the fundamentals segment, the authors provide a “quick tour” of basic spin physics (Ch 2). The basics are then extended to define objects and operators in both Hilbert and Liouville spaces (Ch 3-6). In their development of these objects, the authors provide very useful examples and diagrams. In addition, they graphically single out important points for special emphasis. In this way, the reader is exposed to the “object-oriented” terminology simultaneous to learning important definitions of operators that will be used again and again in later sections of the book. One particularly helpful feature of this section is the progressive development of the mathematical relations from simple 2-level (i.e., spin-1/2) systems to more generalized multi-level spin systems (ex. Sect 3.3). Chapter 6 concludes this section with an introduction to pulse sequence operators and response functions used extensively in the next section on magnetic resonance. The second section on magnetic resonance begins by describing the spin interactions and relaxation (Chapters 8,9). Internal interactions in the form of Hamiltonian operators for both NMR and ESR as well as the effects of spin-locking and molecular motion are reviewed here. Several chapters on MR pulse sequence systems follow with descriptions of the numerous types of echoes from both simple (Ch 9) and multiple pulse experiments (Ch 11). The principals of various double resonance (Ch 10) and spectroscopy (Chapters 12,13) techniques complete the review of conventional NMR/ESR methodology. Instead of introducing the basic physical principles and leaving the reader to delve into their particular experiment alone, the authors establish the operator-based theory for a wide variety of applications giving the reader a head start in sequence development. As a clinical MR physicist, I found these chapters to be instructive in the development and understanding of complex pulse sequences such as chemical shift imaging (CSI) and missing pulse steady state (MP-SSFP). Chapter 14 uses the same methodology in developing logic gates, qubits, and other theoretical aspects of spin quantum computing for advanced readers. The complementary section at the end of the book begins with a detailed description of three different mathematical approaches to describing and understanding complex spin systems: Floquet Approach (FA), Perturbation-Theoretical Approach (PTA), and the Secular Averaging Approach (SAA). The application of these algorithms to particular spin systems is left to the reader and several established references. The involved installation of the “General Approach to Magnetic Resonance Mathematical Analysis” (GAMMA) software on the CD-ROM included with the text is briefly described in chapter 16. The software also provides links to websites where upgrades and improved documentation can be obtained. Overall, I rate the text highly on the author's ability to handle the complex and diverse topic of magnetic resonance in such a concise manner. This can be attributed to the author's use of consistent operator-based terminology in addition to the decision to direct the readers to selected reference materials for more advanced discussion of particular topics. Combined with a text on linear algebra and quantum physics, Object-Oriented Magnetic Resonance should prove to be useful reference for MR researchers.