A case study by the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) that provides "a vehicle for gaining insight into the impact that Federal policies have had on the development of NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) imaging as a modality, on the industry that manufactures the imagers, on the hospitals and medical centers that might consider acquiring NMR imagers, and on a public interested not only in the timely introduction of valuable innovations, but also in protection from unsafe devices and rapid increases in health care costs" (p. 3).