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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 Paul C. Lauterbur in 1971 through research papers (suppressed as unpublished).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).
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"
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
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.
But would you want to live forever in a Windows Vista Box. You are thinking naughty things, cancel or allow.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Indeed. A transporter that works like the visible man.
Step 1: die. (not strictly necessary, but makes the remaining steps more pleasant.)
Step 2: freeze body in great big ice cube. agitate and freeze rapidly to avoid bubbles and crystals.
step 3: put ice block on giant deli slicer. Use "1 cell thick" setting.
step 4: further divide ice slice into pieces small enough to use with the MRI device. Carefully label the position of each piece.
step 5: painstakingly scan each piece and store in appropriate database.
step 6: repeat steps 3 through 5 over the next several months until no slices remain.
step 7: ?
step 8: arrive at destination, nearly perfectly reconstructed and only a little bit dead (just your brains. and organs)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
What it amounts to is an atomic force microscope combined with a magnetic needle that allows it to perform proton NMR. An AFM is a pretty general and adaptable technique- the key element is the cantilever system that allows you to detect a tiny amount of force exerted on atoms in a sample; how you supply that force, via magnetic resonance, van der Waals forces, the Casimir effect, etc., makes it versatile. The significant drawback of this instrument is that it is a supermicroscope, not a macroscale scanner like a medical MRI machine. Samples are usually limited to a surface area of a few hundred square microns. The resolution achieved here is impressive, but is best understood as an advancement in microscopy. Just as with a light microscope or an electron microscope, this is a technique for scanning cells, not bodies.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Has this IBM invention patented itself yet?
It's true that the precise location of individual ions would be slightly misplaced. However, as long as the wiring of neurons was accurately recreated it might work.
So while the 'recreated' organism would not be 'exactly' the same as the scanned organism, it might be good enough.
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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.
...not a tinfoil hat, but rather, a hat made from Mu-metal.
No, this technique isn't anything like magnetoencephalography. The only way it could scan your brain is if you allowed them to cut out a cell at a time. Medical scale MRI works by aligning the spins of certain nuclei (usually hydrogen atoms, which are mostly bound in water molecules in your body) using a powerful magnetic field, then using a radiofrequency field to flip those spins, and then measuring the magnetic fields produced by the nuclei as they relax to their equilibrium state. Functional MRI, or fMRI, the type often used in brain activity monitoring, measures the differing magnetic properties of hemoglobin has when oxygen is bound versus free. Therefore, the technique monitors areas of increased oxygen usage by regions of the brain, which generally correlate to increase activity.
The technique the article discusses, however, is not to measure the magnetic properties of a bunch of atoms, but to make a picture of a sample by scanning atom by atom. A very precisely constructed magnetic needle scans over a surface, in this case, the surface of a virus. Whenever the needle hovers over a hydrogen nucleus, the nucleus flips, generating a tiny force that pushes down on the stage the virus is mounted on. By recording each of these events, a map is generated of all of the hydrogen nuclei the needle passed over. It's a great way to look at protein structure, but an awfully slow way to look at a brain.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
So you need a way for the external machine to influence parts of your brain. If you can make a computer override the output of any particular neuron then you can burn out and take over the running of one neuron at a time. It's the ship of theseus problem made to work for you. Your identity is not embedded in any particular cell, so you could remain conscious though the duration of the transfer process. I imagine it taking quite a long time, I wouldn't be comfortable with it unless the transfer took a good fraction of a year, but the principle is sound even if you do it more quickly.
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
..."or"?
--- Do you believe in the day?