Nicholas Dwork, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, has filed a provisional patent for a technology that could increase scan speeds of three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The invention could lead to faster results, increase the clinical applications of MRIs, and ultimately improve patient care.
Complex mathematics and engineering are involved in generating images of internal organs and tissues when patients enter the magnetic tube of an MRI machine. Any movement by the patient can corrupt the images, and the scan can take an hour or longer. During this time, the machine makes loud noises as radio waves reverberate off bodily structures to create images. Because the field of view – the part of space that is imaged – is typically rectangular, the radio waves also bounce off areas outside the body. This is where Dwork’s technology comes into play.