51–53 of 53 posts
Does anyone know how this differs from what Subtle Medical is doing? https://subtlemedical.com/
Similar approach, although Subtle Medical are not using adversarial training, just plain old conv-nets with a non-adversarial loss.
A physician's $0.02 - The clinical relevance of FB's work is clearly stated in the blog post: "While state-of-the-art facilities today use 3 Tesla MRI machines, scanners with lower-strength magnets (1.5 Tesla, for example) are still commonly used around the world." Considering that a 1.5T MRI machine costs about $1M less than a comparable 3T model (+/- the cost of warranty, support, and installation), FB's work in th…
> 2) healthcare providers in developing countries will effectively get a low-cost "upgrade" to their existing equipment I am VERY pessimistic about this. I don't know how well you know medical equipment providers but this will never be sold as a low-cost "upgrade" to existing machines. It will be sold with new equipment only and with a hefty surcharge as an option enabling higher patient throughput. There is no real…
To understand how this would work, we need to 1) understand the lifecycle of big-ticket medical equipment (ME) and 2) recognize that ME products are at the core of multiple revenue streams. The first point has to do with the renewed/refurbished market for used/last-generation ME. The second point has to do with the service agreements/warranties/support contracts that are needed in order to keep the ME operational. These factors combine to yield a sales process with multiple negotiating dimensions.
How these negotiations actually play out depends on whether you're a deep-pocketed healthcare system or not (it sucks, but it's true). If you can afford it, you'll have lots of ways to sport the latest and greatest ME without breaking the bank on any single purchase. Some of your old stuff will end up in the renewed/refurbished ME market, thereby offsetting your total cost of ownership (either directly or indirectly). Once used ME hits secondary markets, the customer profile changes: these customers are not looking to keep up with the Cleveland Clinics and Stanford's of the world. They're looking for long-term value, so reliability and longevity is top priority - and this is where I see software "upgrades" coming into play. Some of these customers may already have one or two MRIs, while others may not. In either case, the software "upgrade" becomes a differentiator that speaks directly to the priorities of these customers.
TL;DR - Today, healthcare providers with limited financial resources (e.g. those in developing countries, rural areas) are incentivized to purchase capital equipment through "discounts" on service/support. In the future, we're likely to see software "upgrades" (such as those made possible by FB's work) bundled/leveraged as an incentive. The net effect is the same: extend the clinically useful lifespan of medical equipment (MRIs in this case) and greater access to medical technology around the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I'm worried how any automatic correction which is not completely specified can be used in medical imaging. We sometimes fail to even compress images correctly (remember the scanners changing numbers due to compression?), so trying to automatically remove artefacts sounds dangerous. We already teach doctors about the artefacts and how to handle them. The image doesn't need to be pretty - just functional.
This is mostly handled by MR techs and it is their job to sort this out. Many of the automated tasks are pretty good, and those that aren’t get rejected fast. We don’t tend to get a new sequence/tool/parameter and just run with it, it’s used with the old one until a degree of trust and understanding is established. I’m an MR tech shirking off.