A labVIEW based magnetic resonance imaging console

In in effort to create an affordable magnetic resonance imaging system suitable for research use, a personal computer (PC) based MRI console is currently being designed and studied. National Instrument's LabVIEW, a virtual instrumentation development system, is being used to create the necessary system control and data processing software. The interface to the external hardware is done through the use of generic PC data acquisition cards. It is only recently that personal computers and PC based data acquisition cards have become fast enough to meet the stringent requirements of this application. This paper presents the console design and results from laboratory testing.