From Toshiba America Medical Systems Inc.; FLEXART™ series is a 0.5 T superconducting MRI system that has been designed to meet the expanding role of MRI in today's clinical environment. The system utilizes innovative technologies such as digital RF, high speed actively shielded gradients and optimized RF coils which support a wide range of MRI developments.

(FA) The flip angle a is used to define the angle of excitation for a field echo pulse sequence. It is the angle to which the net magnetization is rotated or tipped relative to the main magnetic field direction via the application of a RF excitation pulse at the Larmor frequency. It is also referred to as the tip angle, nutation angle or angle of nutation.
The radio frequency power (which is proportional to the square of the amplitude) of the pulse is proportional to a through which the spins are tilted under its influence. Flip angles between 0° and 90° are typically used in gradient echo sequences, 90° and a series of 180° pulses in spin echo sequences and an initial 180° pulse followed by a 90° and a 180° pulse in inversion recovery sequences.

Flow phenomena are intrinsic processes in the human body. Organs like the heart, the brain or the kidneys need large amounts of blood and the blood flow varies depending on their degree of activity. Magnetic resonance imaging has a high sensitivity to flow and offers accurate, reproducible, and noninvasive methods for the quantification of flow. MRI flow measurements yield information of blood supply of of various vessels and tissues as well as cerebro spinal fluid movement.
Flow can be measured and visualized with different pulse sequences (e.g. phase contrast sequence, cine sequence, time of flight angiography) or contrast enhanced MRI methods (e.g. perfusion imaging, arterial spin labeling).
The blood volume per time (flow) is measured in: cm3/s or ml/min. The blood flow-velocity decreases gradually dependent on the vessel diameter, from approximately 50 cm per second in arteries with a diameter of around 6 mm like the carotids, to 0.3 cm per second in the small arterioles.

Different flow types in human body:
See also Flow Effects, Flow Artifact, Flow Quantification, Flow Related Enhancement, Flow Encoding, Flow Void, Cerebro Spinal Fluid Pulsation Artifact, Cardiovascular Imaging and Cardiac MRI.

Quick Overview
Please note that there are different common names for this artifact.

Flow effects in MRI produce a range of artifacts, e.g. intravascular signal void by time of flight effects; turbulent dephasing and first echo dephasing, caused by flowing blood.
Through movement of the hydrogen nuclei (e.g. blood flow), there is a location change between the time these nuclei experience a radio frequency pulse and the time the emitted signal is received (because the repetition time is asynchronous with the pulsatile flow).
The blood flow occasionally produces intravascular high signal intensities due to flow related enhancement, even echo rephasing and diastolic pseudogating. The pulsatile laminar flow within vessels often produces a complex multilayered band that usually propagates outside the head in the phase encoded direction. Blood flow artifacts should be considered as a special subgroup of motion artifacts.

Artifacts can be reduced by reduction of phase shifts with flow compensation (gradient moment nulling), suppression of the blood signal with saturation pulses parallel to the slices, synchronization of the imaging sequence with the heart cycle (cardiac triggering) or can be flipped 90° by swapping the phase//frequency encoding directions.

See also Flow Related Enhancement and Flow Effects.

Flow compensation is based on the principle of even echo rephasing and a function of specific pulse sequences, wherein the application of strategic gradient pulses can compensate for the objectionable spin phase effects of flow motion. Gradient moment nulling of the first order of flow is another adjustment for the reduction of flow artifacts.
Gradient field changes can be configured in such a way that during an echo the magnetization signal vectors for all pixels have zero phase angle independent of velocities, accelerations etc. of the measured tissue. The simplest velocity-compensated pulse sequence is the symmetrical second echo of a spin echo pulse sequence.
Strategic gradient pulses are integrated in special sequences (e.g. CRISP, Complex Rephasing Integrated with Surface Probes) and for the most sequences flow compensation is an optional parameter.