From low-dose to no-dose: thin-section magnetic resonance imaging for evaluation of pulmonary nodules

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the lung remains a challenge for radiologists, due to certain limitations such as the low proton density of pulmonary parenchyma and fast signal decay associated with susceptibility artefacts at air-tissue interfaces. While gross pathologies of the lung parenchyma can usually be visualized, MRI could not be clinically established so far for the detection and evaluation of pulmonary nodules. However, technical advances during the past two decades, such as parallel imaging, rotated phase-encoding, and shared-echo technique have led lung MRI from a technological alcove to the doorsteps of clinical routine (1-3)