Slashdot Mirror
New Algorithm Could Substantially Speed Up MRI Scans
An anonymous reader writes "In a paper to be published in the journal Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, researchers detail an algorithm they have developed to dramatically speed up the process of producing MRI scans. The algorithm uses information gained from the first contrast scan to help it produce the subsequent images. In this way, the scanner does not have to start from scratch each time it produces a different image from the raw data, but already has a basic outline to work from, considerably shortening the time it takes to acquire each later scan."
"If you want a better image then they take longer."
.25 mm^3 or .5 mm^3 {or, hopefully even higher resolution}); however, this will require scans of many hours (not with live humans), even more than 24 hours in some cases.
That's very true with MRI (my research is with MRI). We have our research participants spend 70 minutes in the MRI scanner. This is to capture 6 (7 with a localizer - a quick scan to set up the scanning area) different types of brain images. Our longest individual scan is just over 19 minutes. However, I have a project in the planning stages that will allow me to increase the resolution dramatically (from 1 mm^3 or 2 mm^3 to
This new algorithm seems like it could really help clinicians and some researchers. My type of scanning won't be helped by it for a long time though because I cannot sacrifice quality for speed. I need the sharpest, least distorted images possible. Clinically, that doesn't matter as much because radiologists are not quantifying parts of the brain in the same way that I do.
It's a fascinating technology though. Anything we can do to speed up scan acquisition and post-processing is very welcome.