Introduction

Abstract

In the seventeenth century people dreamed about a machine to get rid of evil spirits and obsessions, which were thought to be the main source of misfortune and disease. I am not going to question this approach, because in a way it sounds reasonable. They dreamed of a machine that would display images from the inner world of men which could be easily identified and named. Somehow these are the roots of MR imaging. Of course, we now view disease from a different point of view but our objectives remain the same, namely to make diseases visible and to try to characterize them in order to cure them. This was the reason for setting up a symposium on tissue characterization.