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Portable Brain Scanner to Save Premature Babies
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at UCL (University College London) are developing a portable brain scanner which could help save the lives of premature and newborn babies in intensive care by avoiding to move them to conventional scanning facilities. A current prototype combines the advantages of both magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound. It uses optical tomography to generate images showing how the brain is working and a new generation should be ready by 2008 and such scanners should be commercially available shortly after."
Small portable MRI's could not be used only for babies.
I've got a problem with my knee, which was diagnosed without actually *seeing* it through an x-ray machine. With the resolution of an MRI it would likley be visible. Assuming my knee is as big as a babies head, this could be used in orthapedic applications as well.
From the pictures in the article, I figure its big enough to fit most limbs in it.
It said premature and newborn babies, not unborn. I know it's too much to expect for you to actually read the article, but is just reading the summary too strenuous for your miniature intellect?
Being in the medical field, I can't help but wonder about the discrepancy between people wanting lower health care costs and their expectations for modern health care to perform miracles. They seem to me to be mutually exclusive. While innovative technologies such as the one described in the article are fascinating, it will surely drive up NICU costs even more if it is adopted. Of course ICUs in general are money sinks anyway.
I wonder if it looks like a salt shaker and makes a high-pitched whistling noise when waved over the body. I saw these being used back on TV in the sixties.
I thought for a minute there may be a cure for my premmature ejaculation! Oh well
- There's no place like 127.0.0.1
Oh, I was like thinking...scanning the babies' minds and uploading them into new, fresh healthy babies...
I read "portable MRI" in the slashdot post and hoped "Cool ! Small portable device needing to generate ultra-strong several Tesla magnetic field for their function !".
But, no, after RTFA I discovered that it's just some device using regular light to look through babies' skulls.
Too bad. No "magnetic gun" involved. Still haven't found what to put on the heads of my Sharks.
I, for one, do *NOT* welcome my new "magnet of doom"-equipped pediatrician colleagues overlords.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Either way, they are just a clump of cells. AND SO ARE YOU
Basic Biology. Learned that in 8th grade, dude.
google.slashdot
MRI scanners vary in size and shape, and newer models have some degree of openness around the sides, but the basic design is the same. Once the body part to be scanned is in the exact center or isocenter of the magnetic field, the scan can begin.
As of todays technology, the MRI provides the greatest view inside the human body that technology can afford without doing actual surgery. It is largely done through discernment using that contrast injection technology, where injecting certain colored dies into the blood stream lets them see the seperation of parts. Its a very cool technology, all made possible through magnetism.
Are you sure you don't read at -1 because you don't want your own posts to be filtered out?
Maybe it's the xmas alcohol, but I feel that premature babies are the true early adopters of existence and deserve more credit.
When an impromptu demonstration of the device on technology reporter, CmdrTaco, from a popular website "Slashdot.org" produced this startling result.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I'm a dad of twin girls born very prematurely and with an extreme low weight (2 pounds each, basically). They stayed one month in ICU with dedicated monitoring 24/7. Today they're 18 months old, completely healthy with no sequels of their prematurity, partly because they had all the equipment at the ICU (MRI notably); if they moved the girls to a conventional facility they would have been in great danger. Needless to say I'm eternally grateful to medical advancements and the medical personnel that provides the care; I live in a country where we pay taxes through the nose, but I don't mind paying taxes for that purpose :)
Best regards,
Emmanuel
Problem is : it's not a real MRI. A portative MRI would be a REAL public danger because it has to generate ultra-strong magnetic fields to function properly.
This is just a bunch of lasers shining light through their target.
It only works on newborns' head because :
- Their skull is thin on most places and even un-fused in some places : light can easily go in.
- Their head is small so that the laser travels a short path and isn't absorbed that much and therefor still caries useful information when going out.
It's unusable for knees because they're to big and the bone is WAY to thick (one of the thickest. Remember : it has to support your body's weight).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
avoiding to move them = premature babies generally have underdeveloped organs (e.g. lungs) and are rather sensitive to environmental factors. they are generally in incubators (uhh protective boxes / imitation womb) for a period of months until their bodies are strong enough to cope.
...if you collect six of them you can turn them in for a free taco!
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
still trying to promote your lame website, arent you?
We're all talking about NATURAL selection these days, (vs ID). Well guess what we're doing with the miracles of modern medicine?
:)
Breaking the natural selection. All kinds of diseases have gone up and we all attribute this to the worse conditions we live in. Noone seems to notice that due to modern medicine, more sick people survive, have children and contribute to the problem.
Now of course it's a huge moral dilemma. If something happens with a human I care about, would I let him/her go if it helps some abstract concept of natural selection? Nope.
But the mass effect anyway, is that it's a vicious cycle: the more the medicine gets better, the more we'll need it to survive.
Either this, or expect some GATAKA-like distopia in the short to medium term future
I don't see many comments on the really interesting point of this story, a fourth non-invasive technology to view the insides of the human body. X-ray, ultrasound and MRI are commonly used for this purpose. It's exciting to speculate on other clinical applications for this new tech.
Whish slashdot had a "-5, Eugenics flamebait troll" mod. ...
...) ?
So what's your big plan, dude ? Killing every one who has a disease ? And what's your definition of disease ?
Let's kill all premmies ! And then proceede to retards, overweighted, short sighted, non-sportive, ugly,
In the end maybe you'll be killing everyone who isn't tall, strong, blond and blue-eyed ?
Trying to impersonate evolution and play Mother Nature ? Other people have tried that before too. Didn't work as they wished.
And how do you know that you aren't killing something useful ?
You may see sickle cells anemia disease, but maybe evolution saw it as a way to poison malaria ?
You may see more premmies, but maybe evolution will end up with a way to avoid pregnancy complications (hypertension, diabetes,
Technology to help diseased survive may be costly, but by letting the scientific do reasearch and developpement on them, science will come with even cheaper and cheaper solutions.
Maybe some people though the same things, years ago, when penicillin was discovered : "Should we really be saving sick children and elderly who catch infections that easily ? Should we stop before 90% percent of the population has recieved such a 'easy-infection' gene ?"
But look today : anti-bacterial treatment are so cheap and easy to buy that we start to have problems with people USING it too much.
Same goes for vaccination : Once was something new, now is cheap and available very widely and has already managed to completly extinguish a few infectious diseases (and a few more other could be with enough efforts. And the rest could be better controlled).
To make an exageration, your question sound a little bit like : "Why do have a society ? economics ? Everyone on it's own. Survival of the fitest and strongest, otherway we handsome and strong barbarians will be invaded tomorrow by a huge amount of clumsy, glass-wearing, un-athletic, intellectual nerds that could otherwise be able to hit a mamoth point-blank and couldn't eat if we weren't around to feed them."
Now look what the nerds have developped today : Computers. The Internet. The exact things you're using right now to write about your eugenic garbage.
If you consider only genes maybe this can seem weird : we may look counter-productive in terms of evolution. But don't forget we evolve as a whole. As a civilisation, what we may apparently loose in terms of genes, we may compensate by developping more advanced technology that is ALSO passed along to futur generations. (Dawkin's memes)
And about a "premmies"-gene dominating the population : very unlikely. A new caracteristic will spread that fast, in competition with the general population, only if it has a lot of beneficial advantages, and the only small disadvantage was very easily removed by a new easy and cheap treatment. Which isn't the case yet : It is only a small step toward better help for babies. It's not likely to make a fast boom and propagate through general population at mad speeds, it needs positive selection (being a good advantage) for that to happen. Otherwise it'll take thousands of years to spread and by them, humanity will either have disapeared. Or will have discovered much more advanced forms of technology.
And for the last time : Please stop talking about killing what you consider inferior. Let evolution sort it in the long term.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When you put it that way, eugenics sounds just peachy. I suppose all these people bred "crap" genes into humankind?
Maybe Tom Cruise can buy one so he and Katie can see what the hell's wrong with him in the comfort of their own home.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night. (Metaphorically.)
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
This is NOT new technology. This is a new appliance. Google for "biomedical optics".
From the article: "A prototype of the scanner, called MONSTIR..."
Ok, even though I have somewhat of a background in usability and marketing, I don't think I need to point out what may be a funny point in selling this technology...
Doc: Ok ma'am, things might look GRIM, but don't worry, we're going to attach our newest, greatest technology to your baby's head and blast the little meatbag with rays to get a good look at what is going on!
Mother: Um.. this sounds a little unsafe..
Doc: Don't worry, with a name like "MONSTER", what could go wrong?!
Is that like when I use a portable scanner to save my old photos? Somehow, I think not.
"Here you go Mrs. Smith. Little Tyler is right here on this 1GB CF card. If you get bad sectors just bring him back for a refresh. Have a Merry Christmas!"
I was going to report back on the one I got today, but Santa forgot to leave the right size lithium thionyl chloride batteries.
Spock was doing better stuff than this in the 60's...
Have a look at the website he links from his name: he simply reposts his own blog entries verbatim here on Slashdot.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
welcome our new brain scanning overlords.
Interesting article. What's special about this is that it represents functional, not anatomic, imaging of the brain. Bedside neonatal head imaging is currently dominated by ultrasound, useful in identifying areas of hemorrhage most common in preemies. MRI is also useful in neonates, but again usually looking for hemorrhage or abnormalities of brain morphology.
This technique uses light attenuation to measure oxygen consumption in the brain. Hemoglobin (Hb) is the oxygen-carrying molecule in blood. It can bind up to 4 oxygen molecules, and in this configuration is called oxyhemoglobin. When unbound, it's called deoxyhemoglobin. The technique they've developed can measure relative concentrations of the two forms of Hb allowing the computation of areas of increased metabolic activity or brain activity. The article boils down to being able to show increased activity in the upper extremity motor cortex when the researchers moved the kids' arms.
In this sense, the technique is more like PET or functional MRI (fMRI) imaging, and appears to be a visual analog to EEG, or electroencephalography, commonly used by neurologists to identify seizure foci. Instead of a series of squiggly lines (think polygraph test), this actually gives you a series of slices of the brain with color demonstrating the area of activity.
Clinically, this won't replace ultrasound or MRI, but it will provide more information about brain function. This may help determine an infant's prognosis after the ultrasound has already demonstrated a hemorrhage, or assist a neurosurgeon trying to eliminate a seizure focus.
Yes... I'm sick of reading posts by people that classify the disabled/sick (like myself) as inhuman enough to just "let die" as if we are just mindless objects that lack any value or will to live. (Newsflash, trolls: we are people too!) Especially since those same people seek medical help quite readily when *they* need it.
While the trolls don't acknowledge it, people like me also do in fact contribute to society -- as much or more than they do. Sometimes we are a source of joy or companionship for others, sometimes we are professors, writers, surgeons, physicists, babysitters... That we have different needs, and that our rarity makes handling those needs more expensive, should not determine whether we "deserve" to live. Especially since the majority of non-disabled people contribute absolutely nothing: they are born, they eat, they breed a couple more humans, and then they die without having made any mark. How is that more worthy of survival than Einstein (autistic), Hawking (ALS), Roosevelt (polio), or any of the other disabled people that *have* made a big difference?
Keeping the kid in a Pod for the first few years might be a plan. (Get at least a 30 GB drive if you plan on having a large family.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The grandfather of this post did have some valid points. It boils down to this:
From the individual's perspective, the remedies we have today are a godsend - they stave off death, save our loved ones, and the virtue of their effects is strongly biologically reinforced: one of our strongest instincts is for survival.
Others see things from a more abstract perspective. Because of medical technology, those susceptible or predisposed to diseases that might prevent them from reproducing are now able to reproduce. We therefore assume the responsibility of maintaining a healthy population, taking said responsibility from evolution. "Negative traits", defined as those that decrease the fitness (survival likelihood) of an individual, are no longer eliminated from the population. If we can continue to maintain and increase our medical prowess, then we are right in what we do - we can overcome the diseases that ail us, and we can provide good quality of life for all those who live. But if our technology cannot eliminate and cure the diseases, we fight for nought - all of our efforts simply increase the incidence of the diseases in the population.
Certainly these words are not meants to make value judgements about people. They simply explain the overall effects of our medical advances. We can keep more people alive, but the more we do this, the larger proportion of the population would perish if our medical technology was somehow removed - think Katrina, terrorism, fall of the government, etc.
I agree with the use of medical technology - in fact, I am studying now to become a biomedical engineer and develop devices like the ones mentioned in this article, or even prosthetics to help the injured or disabled. These technologies will increase quality of life for a large number of people. Their utter absence might result in the death of the many who depend on them, but that would result in a healthier population, who would then have a better average quality of life.
Because I am a compassionate person, I cannot support the removal of the medical technology that helps many. But the conclusion I reach after considering the future health of the population worries me. What will lead to the best eventual health and quality of life for the population? It is a difficult question, and most assuredly one that neither I, nor you, nor the writer of the grandparent can answer. Hopefully our medical technology will sufficiently advance to enable us to remove diseases from the population forever, but until then, the current therapies are both a blessing and a curse.
Did you see the pool? They flipped the bitch!
Here is an idea: someone develop a cheap (price in the hundreds of ) ultrasound device that can be hooked up to a regular pc USB port.
Write up some open source software to go with it (so anyone can improve upon it).
Save the world and make lots of money.
Though it might cause men to become an overwhelming majority in some poor countries, the benefits would be enourmous.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
First, let me just say that I like your post much more than the other because you take time to make reflexions, to ponder different sides of the question, and I *do* agree that your way to see things is valid is should be considered (unlike some other posts in this thread that sounded too much like "JUST KEEL THE RETARDS AND DISABLED").
:
: :
Some additionnal thing I would like to add
There's a little funny thing about the pelvis in humans and specially with women.
To be able to run walk and run in straight up bipedal position, the pevlis need to be narrow with a more closed angle : so both legs are optimally articulated at the hip level.
But to be able to give birth to children, the exit-path through which the baby comes out has to be wide enough (the wider it is, the bigger the baby can be and the more developped and "ready to meet the real world" he can be).
Until the mid of the last century, the evolution had to come up with a compromise : the pelvis angle is hormone controlled and sex dependant. Men usually have a narrower one making them more able to run, Women have, most of the time, a more wide one, making it easier to give birth to babies.
But with industrialisation, medical supervision becoming cheaper and more widespread, caesarean sections are becoming more available to the general population and with lower risk than before.
Some studies show tend to show that, maybe narrower pelvis are becoming a little bit more widespeard in occidental women. And in an evolutionnary point of view, it kinds of make sense : modern occidental world has achieved a better gender parity than before, women spend most of their life running around (between job and home) and only give birth once or twice in their lifetime (other medical advances making this number far enough to perpetuate the specie), therefor it make more sense to drop a trait that may have been beneficial in the past (when women gave birth to 7+ children and had to stay home to raise them, while the man ran after the mamoth) but has nothing to do with today's life. In the rare case of babies "too big for the pelvis", ceasarian cut can be performed. And in the end maybe this will reduce part of the hip problems that are more prevalent in women.
Similar case : the blood coagulation. It is increased when female hormones are raised. In the past, this made sense because women could die during childbirth because of excessive bleeding. Nowadays, if something such goes wrong, the mother can be sent in a hospital (if she isn't there already), the faulty blood vessels can be sutured (and serum infusion and/or blood transfusion given if needed). Today, this increased coagulation is more a problem than a help, as it causes a lot deaths (deep veins thrombosis and pulmonary embolia kill much more women than men because of this).
And maybe, over the course of generations, this increased coagulation will disapear, because medicine provide much more safer ways with less complication to prevent bleeding. Thus *lowering* the overall cost in both terms of human lives AND monetary costs.
The whole idea of "negative traits" and "positive traits" is a good model to teach evolution. But the reality is infinitely more complex. When speaking of "survival of the fittest", "fittest" represent a very complex equilibrium between a lot of trait each having some good effects and bad effects. The whole idea of evolution is delicately pondering the cost/gain ratio of whole complex systems, and finding an optimal balance for a given environment.
But you're also right
we are slowly becoming more dependant on modern technology. Questions like
- How much can we rely on it before it gets too much dangerous in case of technology missing/failing ? (the Katrina scenario you mentionned)
- How can we make the technology simple and reliable to be able to quickly re-deploy it ? (See commu
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'll bet that the real problem is more that these babies are just very, very expensive to treat. Given that their treatment causes them pain and they are still likely to wind up with serious disabilities or brain damage due to their condition, we should ask ourselves if we should just allow them to pass peacefully. That's what they all did at one time, and civilization didn't collapse.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
When I click on the parent's comment number, it says "I propose that the reason he's so good is because he's done it [colon close-parenthesis]". When I look at the page source, it has the word 'before' before the happy face. When I hit 'reply' to that comment 'before' shows up like it should. Hmm... Wonder how it shows up in Firefox (my usual browser; I'm visiting family and they have IE 6.0.2900 w/ XP SP2, and the last time I installed Firefox on this particular computer I got blamed for Windows ME subsequently crapping out).
/.'s source pages, that line's supposed to read:
Just in case anyone doesn't look at
"I propose that the reason he's so good is because he's done it before."
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
It appears likely that your premature acquaintance did not suffer many complications of prematurity or any severe ones such as blindness, deafness, or brain damage from hemmorhages. Most of the ones who do will never go on to higher education, and may never hold a paying job in their lives. They may never be able to take care of themselves, or even speak about how they feel. That last condition is the saddest, because they can't communicate their pain and get the underlying condition treated properly. They live their abbreviated lives in silent suffering.
Also remember that these premies are natural events and not anyone's fault; we don't have a moral responsibility to "do something!" regardless of the likely outcome. Rather than go to extraordinary lengths just for mere survival, it's probably best to withdraw care in such cases and let nature take its course. It doesn't give anyone a chance to be a medical hero, but it can be the most humane and merciful thing to do.
Sustainability and energy independence essay