Truncation Artifact - Video Lesson

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to our course on MRI artifacts. In this lesson, we'll discuss truncation artifacts, also known as Gibbs artifacts. We will discuss what a truncation artifact is and what it looks like, the causes of truncation artifacts, and the potential effect on diagnosis. We'll also troubleshoot how to mitigate truncation artifacts. Let's get started. First, let's discuss what truncation artifacts are. Truncation artifact appears as a series of alternating bright and dark lines that run parallel to sharp edges in the image. These bands are most noticeable at interfaces where there is a sudden change in signal intensity, such as between gray and white matter in the brain or along the borders of the spinal cord surrounded by high signal CSF. A key characteristic of truncation artifact is that it occurs perpendicular to the phase encoding direction, which helps differentiate it from true anatomic structures or pathology. To understand why truncation artifact occurs,