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IBM Creates MRI With 100M Times the Resolution
An anonymous reader writes "IBM Research scientists, in collaboration with the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University, have demonstrated magnetic resonance imaging with volume resolution 100 million times finer than conventional MRI. This result, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, signals a significant step forward in tools for molecular biology and nanotechnology by offering the ability to study complex 3D structures at the nanoscale."
This is a concerning development for those who have been following the advancement of science (MRI Technology). One of the undocumented effects (intentional) of MRI is "direct particle insertion" where the resonance of strong magnetism can be used to transport matter particles as energy through short distances and reassembled within confines of enclosed cavity (skull or chest). This is DOCUMENTED FACT as established by Dr. Paul C. Lauterbur in 1971 through research papers (suppressed as unpublished). With current levels of technology there is too much diffusion by radio waves to take advantage of timing effects due to low resolution. Experiments are performed DAILY to eliminate high levels of interference (government frequencies) but none could prove beyond a doubt a way to perfect a technique for changing neurons due to the small size (can be seen with the strongest microscope only). Having mapped a human brain (genomics) with fine resolution permits modification of magnetic waves to CREATE AND DESTROY thought. This tech was five years to deployment but has been accelerated for widespread acceptance (planned by bureaucracy).
imagine the possibilities..
Now if only HP and AT&T would bring back their R&D departments we might see more companies doing basic research like this.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Now we are getting closer. Once you can extract the raw brain data, you can simulate the data. You can 'live' forever if they can get the raw data out.
Adapting inputs to the simulation and that simulation can interact with you...
H.
I wonder if it can resolve individual dendrite connections in the brain. If so, we've just developed our first brain scanner capable of mapping a living brain's circuitry. Which means, in principle, we now possess all the technology required to model a human brain, or for that matter (but at extreme cost), create a synthetic one. Though, at present, we have no way of truly providing it with the interface necessary for communication or interaction with the physical world.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
At the end of the video are two URL's and a Twitter address. Remember when everyone started putting Web addresses at the end of their ads? Are we entering the new age of making sure everyone can Twitter us too now?
to have research departments. They spy on board members using illegal means, defend those choices publicly, and give golden parachutes to the people caught doing it.
Good lord I don't want to see the required storage space for each file on that thing...
The system uses a problematic connection to that easily unplugged to enforce connection only to IBM licensed monitors and output devices.
Third-party devices will be downscaled to 480p or saddled with a new macrovision protection system that inserts random false-positive diseased results into any analog outputs.
And users that want to placecast or timecast MRIs, display their MRIs on their iPhones, or have a jukebox of family MRIs are screwed.
...NMR? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=263527628
Maybe someone who understands this a little better can fill me in.
The article makes the recording mechanism for the magnetic readings, seem a lot like MEG. In MEG, you sit in a magnetically shielded room and have a "cap" containing SQUIDs placed on your head. The squids detect the minor changes in magnetic fields around neurons. Using some fairly complex mathematics and physics, they can pinpoint where the changes occurred in 3D space and can build a topographic activation map similar to those seen using EEG/ERP techniques.
So my question remains. Is this advancement by IBM any different or simply an improvement on a design like MEG?
C. L. Degen, M. Poggio, H. J. Mamin, C. T. Rettner, D. Rugar Nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging PNAS 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0812068106.
The abstract:
I think it's important to emphasize that this is a nanoscale magnetic imaging technique. The summary implies that they created a conventional MRI that has nanoscale resolution, as if they can now image a person's brain and pick out individual cells and molecules. That is not the case! And that is likely to never be possible (given the frequencies of radiation that MRI uses and the diffraction limit that applies to far-field imaging.
That having been said, this is still a very cool and noteworthy piece of science. Scientists use a variety of nanoscale imaging tools (atomic force microscopes, electron microscopes, etc.), but having the ability to do nanoscale magnetic imaging is amazing. In the article they do a 3D reconstruction of a tobacco mosaic virus. One of the great things about MRI is that is has some amount of chemical selectivity: there are different magnetic imaging modes that can differentiate based on makeup. This nanoscale analog can use similar tricks: instead of just getting images of surface topography or electron density, it could actually determine the chemical makeup within nanostructures. I expect this will become a very powerful technique for nano-imaging over the next decade.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/12/0812068106.abstract
I wonder if this is fine enough to be able to distinguish the type and state of a molecule. If so, then you should be able to scan an entire person and store the result.
Then at a later date (when the technology becomes available) you should be able to re-create that person.
The beginnings of a transporter.
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
These devices have been used experimentally to detect truth and lies. It would be interesting to note if the accuracy can be improved with a higher scanning resolution.
I regret that I only have one mod point to give per post.
You'll know exactly what your brain looked like unfortunately the vict^W subject is vaporized...
Has this IBM invention patented itself yet?
kebes already pretty much said it, and as I said (under a different name) on Digg,
Saying "100 million times stronger than MRI" is a deceptive way to describe this. The normal usage of MRI that the public is familiar with is to scan your body, or parts of your body. This new technology would work on a "sample," for instance a biopsy. If the new technology operated at the same scale - your whole body - and was at 100 million times finer resolution - then that would be astounding.
But this is a competitor for other microscopes - not MRI.
Education is the silver bullet.
Why does the video sound like it was narrated by Angela Anaconda? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqQVQwRlthQ
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
It is my firm belief that one of the major limitations to the ability to practice medicine today is the physician's lack of ability to SEE. Yes, the next step, of course, will be to develop tools that can actually perform work at such scales, but the first step, simply, is to see and thus to understand.
Just as the microscope revolutionized medicine, so too will technologies like this, and then some.
For years I have pined for "Star Trek medicine", where you go to the doctor and they wave some device over you and accurately diagnose your problems. Today such diagnosis seem to be largely based on interviewing the patient and whatever symptoms can be crudely gauged with the eye and sense of touch and smell.
The more ubiquitous such highly accurate 3D scanning devices become, the better off we will all be for it.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
...not a tinfoil hat, but rather, a hat made from Mu-metal.
Can anyone have a center for probing?
The article just has some annoying CGI.
sooo... when are we going to be able to buy life-size posters of celebrity MRI's off ebay?
DON'T CAPITALIZE! CO-OPERATE! AND FREE EVERYTHING!
Maybe now we can find Waldo. He's been missing for about ten years now and is considered MIA.
A digital copy of your brain could 'live' forever, but your biological self would still wither and die. Duplicating your consciousness does not magically transfer it.
20 years ago when I was at Stanford they were experimenting with MRI Microscopy.
They were able to image 1/10 mm resolution of the inside of a common snail. Just using miniature coils.
My group was using the same machine to map blood flow volume and direction using MRI.
The article doesn't explain what they are doing in much detail. Even the little video is vague.
This advancement was enabled by a technique called magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM), which relies on detecting ultrasmall magnetic forces.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Unfortunately, this 3D MRI can not be applied to imaging the human brain yet.
One problem is that though this machine has great spatial resolution (precision in space)....it may not have great temporal resolution (precision in time).
Forget that problem dude. The sample to be imaged by this MRI has to be placed on top of what the article calls a "silicon diving board". Now, I'm not the sharpest guy in the world, but "silicon diving board" does NOT sound like skull, which, to my lay understanding seems to be a pretty fair spot for brains to be placed in living things.
This is my sig.
..."or"?
--- Do you believe in the day?
Didn't some crazy kids at MIT show that if in fact someone were trying to beam thoughts into your head, that a tin foil hat was more likely to act in an amplification manner than an interfering one?
To me, that is the perfect, ultimate fail.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Can we please have a mod option for tin foil hat please. This would prevent above problem.
I totally agree with kebes's comments and this reminds me, back when I was working with a team developing DNA Sequencers (I was doing the software, though hardware and Physics have always been an interest), I got to alternative ways to sequence DNA and one of them was nano-scale MRI. At the time there was some research on micron scale MRI of live samples and looking at some papers the equation for spatial resolution was dependent on temperature so it seemed to suggest one could maybe get to nano scale by greatly cooling the apparatus in addition to shrinking the sample/coils/probe.
Has anyone else looked into this? Is it really feasible?
May she rot in hell for what she did to HP Labs.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
I hope that the scan time is not 100 million times longer. A MRI scan takes long enough already.
ITS OVER NINE-THOUSAND!!!!!!!!
To the caps lock filter: I AM YELLING!
I have a computer monitor my brain activity while I sleep. So in case of an accident I just reload the image into a cloned body.
Go Team Venture!!