Visualizing MRI Fourier Space: GitHub

Purpose: Developed an interactive demonstration of how the Fourier transform our brain performs when hearing a chord is related to how an MRI uses magnetic waves to produce images with 2D Fourier transforms. Played guitar while plotting the the waveforms, and then demonstrating the conversion of MRI

Methods and Materials: Simple python fast Fourier transforms of C major chord (middle C, E, G) and expansion to 2D Fourier transforms to demonstrate the influence of rotation and increase in frequency in the Fourier domain. Finally, using simple MRI survey of a healthy brain, got the k-space of the image and showed the planar waves and their overlap as k-space is sampled are summed to create the final image.

Results: One of the science demos for the South Side Science Festival in 2022 comparing our brains processing a C chord to how an MR collects data in k-space using Fourier transforms.

Conclusions: The simulation can demonstrate the intuitive Fourier transform of hearing individual notes in a chord and extend it to how MRIs sample k-space to form an image.