A new paradigm for nanoscale resolution MRI has been experimentally achieved

Novel MRI technique delivers a roughly 10¬nanometer spatial resolution

2013-09-27

(Press-News.org) A team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University has devised a novel nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that delivers a roughly 10¬nanometer spatial resolution. This represents a significant advance in MRI sensitivity -- modern MRI techniques commonly used in medical imaging yield spatial resolutions on the millimeter length scale, with the highest-resolution experimental instruments giving spatial resolution of a few micrometers.

"This is a very promising experimental result," said U. of I. physicist Raffi Budakian, who led the research effort. "Our approach brings MRI one step closer in its eventual progress toward atomic-scale imaging."

MRI is used widely in clinical practice to distinguish pathologic tissue from normal tissue. It is noninvasive and harmless to the patient, using strong magnetic fields and non-ionizing electromagnetic fields in the radio frequency range, unlike CT scans and tradiational X-rays, which both use more harmful ionizing radiation.

MRI uses static and time-dependent magnetic fields to detect the collective response of large ensembles of nuclear spins from molecules localized within millimeter-scale volumes in the body. Increasing the detection resolution from the millimeter to nanometer range would be a technological dream come true.

The team's breakthrough -- the new technique introduces two unique components to overcome obstacles to applying classic pulsed magnetic resonance techniques in nanoscale systems. First, a novel protocol for spin manipulation applies periodic radio-frequency magnetic field pulses to encode temporal correlations in the statistical polarization of nuclear spins in the sample. Second, a nanoscale metal constriction focuses current, generating intense magnetic field-pulses.

In their proof-of-principal demonstration, the team used an ultrasensitive magnetic resonance sensor based on a silicon nanowire oscillator to reconstruct a two-dimensional projection image of the proton density in a polystyrene sample at nanoscale spatial resolution.

"We expect this new technique to become a paradigm for nanoscale magnetic-resonance imaging and spectroscopy into the future," added Budakian. "It is compatible with and can be incorporated into existing conventional MRI technologies."

INFORMATION:

The team's work is published in "Nanoscale Fourier-Transform Magnetic Resonance Imaging" in Physical Review X, v. 3, issue 3, 031016.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Folic acid deficiency has multigenerational effects

2013-09-27

Researchers from the universities of Calgary and Cambridge, UK, have discovered that a mutation in a gene necessary for the metabolism of folic acid not only impacts immediate offspring but can also have detrimental health effects, such as spina bifida and heart abnormalities, on subsequent generations. The animal study, published this week in the journal Cell, also sheds light on the molecular mechanism of folic acid (also known as folate) during development. About one in 1,200 children are born with spina bifida. The detrimental effects of folic acid deficiency during ...

Joslin identifies immune cells that promote growth of beta cells in type 1 diabetes

2013-09-27

BOSTON - (September 27, 2013) - Joslin researchers have identified immune cells that promote growth of beta cells in type 1 diabetes. This study provides further evidence of a changed role for immune cells in type 1 diabetes pathology. The study appears online today and will also appear in the January issue of Diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system infiltrates pancreatic islets and destroys insulin-producing beta cells. However, previous studies in non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice have suggested that immune cells can also contribute to preserving beta cells. This ...

Study: New medical device extremely effective at preventing HIV in women

2013-09-27

It's often said that the HIV/AIDS epidemic has a woman's face. The proportion of women infected with HIV has been on the rise for a decade; in sub-Saharan Africa, women constitute 60 percent of people living with disease. While preventative drugs exist, they have often proven ineffective, especially in light of financial and cultural barriers in developing nations. A new intravaginal ring filled with an anti-retroviral drug could help. Developed with support from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases by Northwestern University visiting associate professor ...

Oncogenic signatures mapped in TCGA a guide for the development of personalized therapy

2013-09-27

New York, September 27, 2013 -- Clinical trial design for new cancer therapies has historically been focused on the tissue of origin of a tumor, but a paper from researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center published on September 26 in Nature Genetics supports a new approach: one based on the genomic signature of a tumor rather than the tissue of origin in the body. It is well known that the emergence of cancer is a multi-step process, but because of the efforts of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), funded by the US National Institutes of Health, and other large-scale ...

Setting blurred images in motion improves perception

2013-09-27

Philadelphia, Pa. (September 26, 2013) - Blurred images that are unidentifiable as still pictures become understandable once the images are set in motion. That's because of a phenomenon called "optic flow"—which may be especially relevant as a source of visual information in people with low vision, reports a study 'With an Eye to Low Vision: Optic Flow Enables Perception Despite Image Blur' (published online ahead of print, September 3, 2013) in the October issue of Optometry and Vision Science official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published ...

Study examines health of kidney donors

2013-09-27

Washington, DC (September 26, 2013) — The short-term risks associated with kidney donation are relatively modest, but because many donors have additional medical conditions, it is important to evaluate their ongoing health. That's the conclusion of a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). In more than a third of kidney transplantations performed in the United States, the transplanted organs come from live donors. Research suggests that there are minimal health consequences for donors, but only a few ...

NASA Mars rover Curiosity finds water in first sample of planet surface

2013-09-27

Troy, N.Y. – The first scoop of soil analyzed by the analytical suite in the belly of NASA's Curiosity rover reveals that fine materials on the surface of the planet contain several percent water by weight. The results were published today in Science as one article in a five-paper special section on the Curiosity mission. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Dean of Science Laurie Leshin is the study's lead author. "One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil," said Leshin. "About 2 ...

Wildlife face 'Armageddon' as forests shrink

2013-09-27

Singapore, 27 September 2013 – Species living in rainforest fragments could be far more likely to disappear than was previously thought, says an international team of scientists. In a study spanning two decades, the researchers witnessed the near-complete extinction of native small mammals on forest islands created by a large hydroelectric reservoir in Thailand. "It was like ecological Armageddon," said Luke Gibson from the National University of Singapore, who led the study. "Nobody imagined we'd see such catastrophic local extinctions." The study, just published ...

Pan-cancer studies find common patterns shared by different tumor types

2013-09-27

Cancer encompasses a complex group of diseases traditionally defined by where in the body it originates, as in lung cancer or colon cancer. This framework for studying and treating cancer has made sense for generations, but molecular analysis now shows that cancers of different organs have many shared features, while cancers from the same organ or tissue are often quite distinct. The Pan-Cancer Initiative, a major effort to analyze the molecular aberrations in cancer cells across a range of tumor types, has yielded an abundance of new findings reported in 18 forthcoming ...

How can supply of penicillin be an issue in any country in 2013?

2013-09-27

Benzathine penicillin G (BPG) is the most essential antibiotic for the treatment and prevention of group A streptococcal infections associated with rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. Yet while some countries such as South Africa and Brazil have stable supplies, most countries with a high RHD burden often suffer interruptions in supply and also have quality control issues. The problems around supply of this drug are discussed in one of the papers of the RHD special issue of Global Heart, the journal of the World Heart Federation. The paper is by Dr Rosemary Wyber, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

The U-shaped relationship between admission peripheral oxygen saturation and all-cause hospital mortality in acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a retrospective analysis using