MRI scans: from an unbearable noise to peace and quiet
Oliver Pinna is a PhD student at King's College London. He tells us about his work developing quieter and faster MRI scans for people with MS.
Why do we want to improve your experience of MRI?
‘gniii, gniii, grrr, grrr, grrr, gniii, gniii, gniii’...
It's difficult to give an idea of what an MRI scan sounds like in writing. But I hope that you can understand that it's not nice. If you're living with MS, you know this. You probably haven’t been scanned just once, but frequently and sometimes for a long time.
Along with my colleagues at King’s College London, I am trying to make MRI scans better.
Who are we?
We're expert physicists, the sort of people who invented MRI scans in the first place. Yes, you're right... first we make something unpleasant and now we try to fix it.
What are silent MRI scans?
Standard MRI scans were developed when electronics and computers were not as advanced as today. Since then, thousands of pages of published science have given us new ideas to work on.
One of these ideas was born in the 1990s when physicists were trying to make MRI scans of water jets. Yes – they were squirting water from a hose through a very expensive set of magnets and electronics. This is hard because the water moves a long way in the time it takes the MRI signals to go from the scanner to the water and “echo” back to the scanner... but they did it! They made an MRI scan with echoes so fast the water didn’t have time to move.
You could compare this to the invention of a drive through restaurant where you get your food before you drive away even if you don’t slow down or stop. And with the quality of your absolute favourite burger. Extremely productive.
Okay, now let’s leave the hamburger scene and get back to MRI scans. The researchers found out that their new scan, on top of being quick, was also nearly silent. They killed two birds with one stone.
Since the 1990s the commercial MRI scanner hardware has improved. This is allowing the widespread adoption of the technique which was first available only to researchers.
We recognise how important it is to people living with MS to have shorter and friendlier scans without sacrificing the scan quality. Late last year I had a meeting at the MS society with other researchers.
I remember being told by a person living with MS that shorter scans are a priority. We want new cures, but the quality of life of a person living with MS shouldn’t be compromised by the research needed for them.
Our initial research with quiet MRI at King’s College London has received positive feedback from people living with MS. A musician even said she could spot the audio frequency of the slight sound of our silent scans. She seemed very happy about our improvement.
Why is this research important for people with MS?
- MRI allows us to assess the damage MS does to the brain
- Our technique can capture MRI signals coming from damaged MS brain tissue quicker than any other
- We, the physicists, are spending time understanding how these signals change between healthy brain tissue and damaged brain tissue
- This MRI technique can improve our understanding of what MS does to the brain as it evolves
- On top of that, this fast-imaging technique has the advantage of being quiet which for some is a feature of standalone importance.
How am I improving the silent technique to target MS?
These new silent scans however had not been created specifically for MS. We can already see nice images of the brain with this clever technique but now need to see details of what MS does to the brain. And that is what I am working on.
My research is to try to make a scan that is silent and fast and that will give us lots of detailed information about the changes in the brain and spinal cord of someone with MS. I have created an initial version of this new MS scan, and the results look very promising. I will be presenting these results to other scientists at our annual scientific conference in Singapore.
Hopefully new ideas and improvements will arise and together we may transform MRI scans from unbearably noisy to peaceful and quiet. Stay tuned!
