Get Scanned (Week 3)

(Left) An example of a Coronal T1 brain scan from a de-identified Patient. (Right) An example of an Axial T1 brain scan from a de-identified patient.
   
 There's an immersion experience, and then there's meta-immersion. This week my experience was spent on immersing myself within the bore of an MR scanner. I really got the ability to connect what Dr. Prince taught me last week with what the Wang lab post-docs, Drs. Alexey Dimov and Junghun Cho, performed in the scanner room. 
    The first visit was simple enough. We watch how a phantom gets scanned and got to ask questions about the different pulse sequences in MRI. From their explanations, users can program different pulse sequences to highlight different tissues within the body. If you know some of the magnetic characteristics of your tissue, you can leverage these facts with a pulse sequence to isolate what you want. Of course, there is a lot of research that goes in to understanding these properties and optimizing the sequences. Then, if you're lucky, maybe a newly designed sequence can be used in the clinic one day. 
    On days two and three, we got to go in. Alexey was trying to test out a new sequence to be used on some other trial patients. I got my first experience in the scanner. It looks smaller on the outside than you would think and it is colder on the inside to boot! If you have never gotten an MRI performed before, it is much noiser than you would expect. Depending on the sequence it can actually be quite musical. As you get used to it, you might find yourself dozing off!
     We weren't there just for fun though, our scans would be used for Junghun's project. First, our brains were scanned with T1 contrast and in the axial and coronal directions (the above image from a patient is an example). These anatomical planes represent both the (potentially) slow scanning axis and the anatomical view of the planes. Then the real part of their projects kicked in. Junghun scanned us with a sequence to put into a post-processing flow that outputs a new imaging map. In essence, the new image weights the differing magnetic susceptibilities of the tissue. This allows a new kind of contrast mechanism and all its capabilities are still currently under investigation.
    Once their project scans were finished, they asked us what part of our body we wanted scanned. I wanted an abdominal scan, which you can see from an example patient below. Others scanned their spine and one even scanned their knee! It was an experience I will never forget, and it got me very excited about all the different directions one can take in this field!

(Left) Axial abdominal MR image of a de-identified patient. (Right) Coronal view of a T2 weighted image of a de-identified patient.


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