Acronyms and Imaging
NO 'N' related medical imaging acronyms (but they are NUCLEAR!)
NMR & Chemistry
>Is NMR and MRI considered the same in the medical field?
Possibly; although they aren't the same. MRI=Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Within physics and physical chemistry, NMR is not normally associated with imaging, but with chemical analysis. And magnetic resonance in general could be said to include electron spin resonance (ESR) and NMR.
While everyone uses the argument that patients were concerned about a "nuclear" technique, the real reason the the n was dropped from nmr was a potential turf battle that radiologists wanted to avoid with nuclear medicine. They figured that if the word nuclear was there nuc med people would claim the technology should be part of their department.
Many of the older scientist types wanted to keep the name nmri for historical reasons but we quickly lost to marketing types who picked up on the hype of no nuclear in the phrase and we now use MR and MRI and MRS in the medical field. However, the signal from the spins is still an nmr signal to me and I regularly use that term when teaching about MR techniques.
>Hi, got a question. My psycology teacher was answering questions >about the test today and he said that the MRI used to be called NMI, >is that right? I always thought it was NMR!!!{* hazards of being offspring of two chemist!!}
NMI - Nuclear Magnetic Imaging would be correct, but in a medical political setting that name would put it under the political control of the NUCLEAR Medicine Dept., and the RADIOLOGIST wanted it under RADIOLOGY. In addition to that (and perhaps the more important reason for changing the notation), the NUCLEAR part of the acronym gave the impression that the isotopes were UNSTABLE, and this was a big problem early on in the history of 'MRI'!!