Better than X-ray vision
Mapping the workings of a living brain is becoming easier through studies done at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research. Using more and more powerful magnets, a team of about 50 University scientists and researchers are improving already sophisticated imaging technology.
If a local hospital’s magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment is like a car engine, then the center’s MRI technology is like a jet engine.
Combining superstrong magnets with their scientific expertise, center director Kamil Ugurbil and his team are able to do better than Superman’s X-ray vision. They cannot read a mind but they can watch brains at work. Other investigators in the center also illuminate the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease and improve the identification of cancer tumors. In addition, they are seeking new insights into soft tissues, particularly organs in the body such as the heart, prostate, and liver.
MRI technology developed alongside X-ray based technologies in the last 30 years, and has surpassed them. “Unlike X-ray technology,” says Ugurbil, “MRI has turned out to be a dynamic field.” He and his team recognized that it could advance far beyond its clinical use in hospitals: the MRI also could be a powerful tool for research. “We have explored and pushed those avenues,” he adds.
The team also continues to increase the power of magnets used to study humans and animals. While typical hospital MRI equipment is 1.5 to 3 Tesla, the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research has MRI magnets from 3 Tesla to 9.4 Tesla and is seeking even more powerful magnets to use in research.
The center’s imaging technology is needed because insights into animal brains don’t always carry over into human brains, particularly with uniquely human characteristics such as language. Moreover, the invasive methods used to study animal brains would not be appropriate for humans.
“If you want to understand brain diseases, you want to understand the brain when it’s normal, too,” says Ugurbil. The Center for Magnetic Resonance Research team looks into the normal brain performing tasks as they seek to identify which areas of the brain are engaged in particular tasks. One particular task often is divided up among different areas of the brain and how this division takes place reveals how the brain works..
Ultimately, the knowledge gained will help researchers better understand mental illness. Psychiatric diseases, Ugurbil points out, represent breakdowns in how the brain works—its functions—without changes in the structure that can be visualized with today’s technology.
At the center, another layer of information for scientists and physicians to analyze is added by using spectroscopy, which analyzes chemicals in the brain or body. Tracking chemicals released by breast cancer tumors, an effort led by Michael Garwood,and Patrick Bolan, promises improvements in diagnosis and in measuring treatments. The team seeks to expand this expertise to prostate cancer.
Garwood, working with colleagues at Mayo Clinic, also was able to gain an image of Alzheimer’s plaques in living mice. To see evidence of Alzheimer’s ravages in a living creature is a major scientific breakthrough.
Yet imaging the brain is relatively easy, says Ugurbil. The next frontier? Figuring out how use the center’s imaging technology to study the heart, liver and other organs in the human torso. Solving that problem will be a major development of technology.
With this study and others at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, notes Ugurbil, the long-term goal is much broader. The improved technology and the knowledge gained will make an impact in how patients are diagnosed and treated by physicians and ultimately improve human health.