Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech

How a new MRI technique is improving patient comfort

April 11, 2018 By Danielle Kirsh

MRI machine

[Image from Wikipedia]

Researchers at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles have created a new technique for administering magnetic resonance imaging tests that helps patients be more comfortable and decreases testing time while increasing accuracy and reliability.

The new test is called MR Multitasking and tackles a common problem cardiologists face which is getting a still image when the heart is pumping and blood is flowing, causing blurry images.

“It is challenging to obtain good cardiac magnetic resonance images because the heart is beating incessantly and the patient is breathing, so the motion makes the test vulnerable to errors,” Shlomo Melmed, executive VP of academic affairs and the dean of the Cedars-Sinai medical faculty, said. “By novel approaches this this long-standing problem, this research team has found a unique solution to improve cardiac care for patients around the world for years to come.”

Patients who have MRIs currently have to hold their breath for a brief moment while an image is taken. MRI technicians have to time the images to a specific part of the heartbeat, according to the researchers. One of the biggest challenges with that method is that it has been shown to be unreliable and unsuitable for patients who have irregular heartbeats or breathing problems.

The researchers instead incorporated the natural movements of the body in order to make the MR Multitasking unit.

“Our solution is like making a video instead of a still image,” Anthony G. Christodoulou, a research scientist and the study’s first author, said. “MR Multitasking continuously acquires image data and then, when the test is completed, the program separates out the overlapping sources of motion and other changes into multiple time dimensions.”

In a test, 10 healthy volunteers and 10 cardiac patients had an MRI using MR Multitasking. The results showed that it was accurate and increased comfort for patients because they no longer had to hold their breath. The researchers performed three cardiac MRI tests in 90 seconds, a much shorter time than standard procedures.

“Now we collect all the data throughout the entire test and sort it afterwards,” Debiao Li, one of the researchers on the study, said. “We get full control after the test, as opposed to trying to control the body’s natural movement during imaging.”

The researchers also reported that MR Multitasking creates images that are six-dimensional because it uses time and motion.

“If a picture is @D, then a video is 3D because it adds the passage of time,” Christodoulou said. “Our videos are 6D because we can play them back four different ways. We can playback cardiac motions, respiratory motion and two different tissue processes that reveal cardiac health.”

MR Multitasking is going through clinical investigation at a number of medical centers throughout the U.S. and the researchers hope to expand the process to other diseases like cancer.

“People have to breath no matter what disease they have, so the ability to separate out the motion is important to many medical specialties,” Li said.

The research was published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering and was support by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Related Articles Read More >

A portrait of AcuityMD co-founder and CEO Michael Monovoukas
Device commercialization platform AcuityMD raises $31M Series A to fund R&D engineer hiring
Harvard Science and Engineering Complex SEC SEAS Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Here’s where Harvard’s engineering dean sees medtech research going
An illustration of a cloud-shaped room filled with medical devices
The cloud is transforming medtech: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, J&J, Philips and GE Healthcare leaders explain
MIT GI pressure detection device
MIT researchers think their tube-based device could improve gastrointestinal disorder diagnosis

DeviceTalks Weekly.

May 20, 2022
DeviceTalks Boston Post-Game – Editors’ Top Moments, Insulet’s Eric Benjamin on future of Omnipod 5
See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

Enewsletter Subscriptions

Enewsletter Subscriptions

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech 100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to E-newsletter
  • Attend our Monthly Webinars
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech