The magnetic resonance imaging process usually requires patients to lie still in the machine for up to 45 minutes. Now, that scan time could be cut to just 15 minutes, with a newly developed algorithm from MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics.
Researchers developed an algorithm that cuts down on the process time by using information gained from the first contrast scan to help it produce the subsequent images, so that the scanner won't have to start from scratch every time it produces a different image from the raw data.
For each pixel, the algorithm calculates what new information it needs to construct the image, and what information — such as the edges of different types of tissue — it can take from the previous scans.
The team is now working to further improve the algorithm by speeding up the time it takes to process the raw image data into a final scan that can be analyzed by clinicians, once the patient has stepped out of the MRI machine. Using standard computer processors, this final step currently takes considerably longer than with conventional MRI scans — but the researchers believe they can reduce this down to the same as that of conventional MRI scans using recent advances in computing hardware from the gaming industry.
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