A new method of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could allow early identification of specific cancers, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and other maladies, say researchers at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, and University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center.
They explain that every body tissue and disease has a unique fingerprint that can be used to diagnose problems before they become untreatable. By using new MRI technologies, known as magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF), to scan simultaneously for various physical properties, the team say that they could differentiate white matter from gray matter from cerebrospinal fluid in the brain in about 12 seconds. And, they believe that the technology could achieve the same results even faster in the near future.
The technology has the potential to make an MRI scan a standard procedure in annual check-ups. A full-body scan lasting just minutes would provide far more information and ease interpretation of the data, making diagnostics far less expensive compared to today’s scans, they say.
The fingerprint of each tissue, each disease, and each material inside the body, can be generated, they say, by simultaneously varying different parts of the input electromagnetic fields that probe the tissues. These variations make the received signal sensitive to four physical properties that vary from tissue to tissue. These differences become evident when applying pattern recognition programs using the same math in facial recognition software.
The patterns can then be charted, and, as the technology progresses, the results will determine whether tissue is healthy or diseased, how badly, and by what.
For a patient, an MRF would seem like a quick MRI. When the scan is done, all of the patient’s images would be compared against a library of fingerprints over the next few years.
