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

During frequency encoding, fat protons precess slower than water protons in the same slice because of their magnetic shielding. Through the difference in resonance frequency between water and fat, protons at the same location are misregistrated (dislocated) by the Fourier transformation, when converting MRI signals from frequency to spatial domain. This chemical shift misregistration cause accentuation of any fat-water interfaces along the frequency axis and may be mistaken for pathology. Where fat and water are in the same location, this artifact can be seen as a bright or dark band at the edge of the anatomy.
Protons in fat and water molecules are separated by a chemical shift of about 3.5 ppm. The actual shift in Hertz (Hz) depends on the magnetic field strength of the magnet being used. Higher field strength increases the misregistration, while in contrast a higher gradient strength has a positive effect. For a 0.3 T system operating at 12.8 MHz the shift will be 44.8 Hz compared with a 223.6 Hz shift for a 1.5 T system operating at 63.9 MHz.

For artifact reduction helps a smaller water fat shift (higher bandwidth), a higher matrix, an in phase TE or a spin echo technique. Since the misregistration offset is present in the read out axis the patient may be rescanned with this axis parallel to the fat-water interface. Steeper gradient may be employed to reduce the chemical shift offset in mm. Another strategy is to employ specialized pulse sequences such as fat saturation or inversion recovery imaging. Fat suppression techniques eliminate chemical shift artifacts caused by the lack of fat signal.

See also Black Boundary Artifact and Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy.

(CSI) Chemical shift imaging is an extension of MR spectroscopy, allowing metabolite information to be measured in an extended region and to add the chemical analysis of body tissues to the potential clinical utility of Magnetic Resonance. The spatial location is phase encoded and a spectrum is recorded at each phase encoding step to allow the spectra acquisition in a number of volumes covering the whole sample. CSI provides mapping of chemical shifts, analog to individual spectral lines or groups of lines.
Spatial resolution can be in one, two or three dimensions, but with long acquisition times od full 3D CSI. Commonly a slice-selected 2D acquisition is used. The chemical composition of each voxel is represented by spectra, or as an image in which the signal intensity depends on the concentration of an individual metabolite. Alternatively frequency-selective pulses excite only a single spectral component.
There are several methods of performing chemical shift imaging, e.g. the inversion recovery method, chemical shift selective imaging sequence, chemical shift insensitive slice selective RF pulse, the saturation method, spatial and chemical shift encoded excitation and quantitative chemical shift imaging.

See also Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy.

The interaction of the patient with the RF coil, which causes shifts of the resonance frequency and damping of the coil's resonance and hence reduction of the quality factor because of magnetic induction and dielectric losses in the patient.
The design and construction of a MRI coil is determined by the load on the coil. The load is either a phantom or the actual sample being imaged.

See also Radio Frequency Coil.

Contrast enhanced GRE sequences provide T2 contrast but have a relatively poor SNR. Repetitive RF pulses with small flip angles together with appropriate gradient profiles lead to the superposition of two resonance signals.
The first signal is due to the free induction decay FID observed after the first and all ensuing RF excitations.
The second is a resonance signal obtained as a result of a spin echo generated by the second and all addicted RF-pulses.
Hence it is absent after the first excitation, it is a result of the free induction decay of the second to last RF-excitation and has a TE, which is almost 2TR. For this echo to occur the gradients have to be completely symmetrical relative to the half time between two RF-pulses, a condition that makes it difficult to integrate this pulse sequence into a multiple slice imaging technique. The second signal not only contains echo contributions from free induction decay, but obviously weakened by T2-decay. Since the echo is generated by a RF-pulse, it is truly T2 rather than T2* weighted. Correspondingly it is also less sensitive to susceptibility changes and field inhomogeneities.
Companies use different acronyms to describe certain techniques.
Different terms (see also acronyms) for these gradient echo pulse sequences:
CE-FAST Contrast Enhanced Fourier Acquired Steady State,
CE-FFE Contrast Enhanced Fast Field Echo,
CE-GRE Contrast Enhanced Gradient-Echo,
DE-FGR Driven Equilibrium FGR,
FADE FASE Acquisition Double Echo,
PSIF Reverse Fast Imaging with Steady State Precession,
SSFP Steady State Free Precession,
T2 FFE Contrast Enhanced Fast Field Echo (T2 weighted).
In this context, 'contrast enhanced' refers to the pulse sequence, it does not mean enhancement with a contrast agent.

Contrast enhanced MRI is a commonly used procedure in magnetic resonance imaging. The need to more accurately characterize different types of lesions and to detect all malignant lesions is the main reason for the use of intravenous contrast agents.
Some methods are available to improve the contrast of different tissues. The focus of dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) is on contrast kinetics with demands for spatial resolution dependent on the application. DCE-MR imaging is used for diagnosis of cancer (see also liver imaging, abdominal imaging, breast MRI, dynamic scanning) as well as for diagnosis of cardiac infarction (see perfusion imaging, cardiac MRI). Quantitative DCE-MRI requires special data acquisition techniques and analysis software.
Contrast enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (CE-MRA) allows the visualization of vessels and the temporal resolution provides a separation of arteries and veins. These methods share the need for acquisition methods with high temporal and spatial resolution.
Double contrast administration (combined contrast enhanced (CCE) MRI) uses two contrast agents with complementary mechanisms e.g., superparamagnetic iron oxide to darken the background liver and gadolinium to brighten the vessels. A variety of different categories of contrast agents are currently available for clinical use.
Reasons for the use of contrast agents in MRI scans are:
Common Indications:
Brain MRI : Preoperative/pretreatment evaluation and postoperative evaluation of brain tumor therapy, CNS infections, noninfectious inflammatory disease and meningeal disease.
Spine MRI : Infection/inflammatory disease, primary tumors, drop metastases, initial evaluation of syrinx, postoperative evaluation of the lumbar spine: disk vs. scar.
Breast MRI : Detection of breast cancer in case of dense breasts, implants, malignant lymph nodes, or scarring after treatment for breast cancer, diagnosis of a suspicious breast lesion in order to avoid biopsy.

For Ultrasound Imaging (USI) see Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound at Medical-Ultrasound-Imaging.com. See also Blood Pool Agents, Myocardial Late Enhancement, Cardiovascular Imaging, Contrast Enhanced MR Venography, Contrast Resolution, Dynamic Scanning, Lung Imaging, Hepatobiliary Contrast Agents, Contrast Medium and MRI Guided Biopsy.