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A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner

nature.com

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Re: A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner

#61

Post by mattkrause »

a-dub wrote: post #5

woah. woah. woah. hold on a second here... are we comfortable enough with understanding all of the behavior of deep learning models to where we can confidently put them in the pipeline for diagnostic clinical imaging? i'm okay with using them for image analysis, but denoising and other image production tasks seems dangerous. how do you know what you're looking at is real as opposed to something that just looks convin…

Amen!

I have seen an alarming number of talks where someone proposes to algorithmically add Gado contrast or turn a T1 into a T2 image. In a few very specific contexts, this makes sense (e.g., aligning a T1 taken in one session with a T2 taken in another). Otherwise though, it seems dangerous to mistake a "real" image with the expected image given another one.

Re: A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner

#62

Post by littlestymaar »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #37
TheJoeMan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, sometimes all you need is “do I have a baseball sized tumor or not”.

But if the answer is "yes", the next question is "do I also have pinhead-sized metastases, and if so, where?"

Isn't this question answered by a PET scan and not MRI ?

Re: A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner

#63

Post by mr337 »

ISL wrote: post #47

Edit: This post was intended as a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30209618 , presently below > The lead author, Dr. Craig Bennett, wanted to get something fresh, so he headed in to the grocery story first thing in the morning. At the fish counter, he spoke the words that will echo down the centuries as a testimony to the dedication and drive of neuroscientists throughout the ages: >"I need a full length…

Some of the automotive stuff is really great to get started. Was working on an agriculture robot and needed a good way to detect a level of something. In short a IP65+ hall effect sensor that can get wet and dirt no problem.

The solution was a $12 ride sensor from a Cadillac SUV of some type. Worked perfect!

Re: A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner

#64

Post by keewee7 »

phkahler wrote: post #28
walterbell wrote: post #2

Code/data for replication: https://github.com/bispmri/Ultra-low-field-MRI-Scanner

Some of the code is Matlab. I wonder if GNU octave is sufficient to run it. That would be a big savings for studying this.

I am surprised that there isn't open source alternatives to Simulink, Stateflow etc.

One reason Matlab is popular in academia and industry is because someone who don't know C/C++ (mechanical engineers etc.) can use something like Simulink to program real-time systems on microcontrollers and FPGAs.

Re: A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner

#65

Post by car »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #37
TheJoeMan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, sometimes all you need is “do I have a baseball sized tumor or not”.

But if the answer is "yes", the next question is "do I also have pinhead-sized metastases, and if so, where?"

Those metastases get taken care of by chemo- or immunotherapy.

Re: A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner

#67

Post by lostlogin »

mr337 wrote: post #63
ISL wrote: post #47

Edit: This post was intended as a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30209618 , presently below > The lead author, Dr. Craig Bennett, wanted to get something fresh, so he headed in to the grocery story first thing in the morning. At the fish counter, he spoke the words that will echo down the centuries as a testimony to the dedication and drive of neuroscientists throughout the ages: >"I need a full length…

Some of the automotive stuff is really great to get started. Was working on an agriculture robot and needed a good way to detect a level of something. In short a IP65+ hall effect sensor that can get wet and dirt no problem. The solution was a $12 ride sensor from a Cadillac SUV of some type. Worked perfect!

I had a friend automating a production line and he needed to detect the level of peanut butter in a vat. He settled on an ultrasonic device as basically anything else ended up caked in peanut butter. It was an impressive setup, all done in Arduino.

Re: A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner

#68

Post by lostlogin »

mabbo wrote: post #50
TheJoeMan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, sometimes all you need is “do I have a baseball sized tumor or not”.

This is precisely what saved my father's life last year. 16 years ago he had some kind of brain cyst. Totally benign. But as a follow up, the doctor ordered yearly MRIs, much to his annoyance. Last year those yearly routine MRIs spotted a brain tumor- before it had time to get dangerous or cause any damage to him. It was growing quickly though and was right near his eye. Quick surgery got it out. I want to live in a…

A tumour can be a lot smaller than 1cm and cause issues. A pituitary microadenoma is an example, and this machine would struggle to show it.

That said, I’d like a go. I suspect that with more samples (more time) you could get the resolution up.

Re: A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner

#69

Post by lostlogin »

littlestymaar wrote: post #62
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the answer is "yes", the next question is "do I also have pinhead-sized metastases, and if so, where?"

Isn't this question answered by a PET scan and not MRI ?

I am unsure of the exact state of play but believe that small mets (eg a few mm in size) are better seen with MRI. MR is probably easier to get than PET too.

There are usually a few radiologists lurking here and they would have better knowledge than me (I’m an MR tech).

https://appliedradiology.com/articles/diagnosing-brain-metas...

Re: A low-cost and shielding-free ultra-low-field brain MRI scanner

#70

Post by queuebert »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #32
lostlogin wrote: post #4

The images are better that I expected. The ‘FLAIR like’ image is not particularly FLAIR like. FLAIR are nicer to look at when fat saturated (not everyone agrees with that), but that’s probably not feasible at that field strength and adding scan time would be a problem on these long sequences. Voxel sizes of 2x2x10 are pretty terrible resolution, but if the alternative is nothing, I guess that’s ok. The static field i…

You know, sometimes all you need is “do I have a baseball sized tumor or not”.

Or a massive brain hemorrhage.
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