I hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but this is just MRI with a new and different kind of tracer.
There will likely be some great clinical applications from this, but it’s not a game changer. It needs a big, expensive, superconducting magnet.
It’s also not radiation free (just like MR). It’s just ionizing radiation free.
"Our iMPI scanner is so small and light that you can take it almost anywhere,” Vogel explains.
Obviously when they say “radiation free” they mean “ionizing radiation free”. The term “electromagnetic radiation” includes things like radio waves and visible light, not just high energy ionizing stuff like UV, x-rays, and gamma rays. Literally everything emits some amount of non-ionizimg radiation. Non ionizing EM is pretty harmless unless you have enough of it to cause heating/burns.
I wasn’t speaking to people like you when I explained radiation. I was speaking to everyone who can’t distinguish this from magic. You’ll also have to understand that tissue heating is a concern in some instances, as is “running around in a large magnetic gradient”. (Guess what happens?)
Vogel has something to sell. The whole article explicitly uses words that the lay public will misunderstand to attract attention in the popular press. This whole article is a puff piece. It’s based on real science, but it is not intended to give the reader an accurate picture of what he’s selling.
There are small MRs that you can move on the back of a semi or keep in a room adjacent to an OR. That’s what he’s saying when you translate this statement into something that remotely resembles the truth.
hasn’t the efficacy of this been called into question?
apparently, as a test, they scanned a business czar’s chest. it showed nothing.
then they scanned a politician’s head. again, nothing.
Sounds like it works fine then
How long until the TSA gets ahold of this so they can inspect the inside of my colon on top of just having picture perfect images of my genitals?
Terahertz imaging devices when?
> Such nanoparticles do not occur naturally in the human body and must be administered as markers
So if I’m reading this right, much like radioactive markers, these must be surgically implanted before they can capture the imaging? In other words, it’s not a direct replacement for MRI or X-ray imaging technologies, though it could potentially be safer for long term care patients that need frequent imaging.
I wish the article touched on the nano particles more… like, what happens to them after you’re done? Are they dissolved or expelled (or do they pile up in various parts of the body and cause chronic issues…)?
Not implanted, just injected into a vessel with a needle or catheter. Any time you introduce something like this into the blood though, there are consequences. X-Ray contrast reactions can be lethal and MRI contrast (more similar to these since it’s metal-based) occasionally kills the arteries going to kidneys, which is bad. So, it’s easy to administer, but this is far too soon to claim it is safe at scale.
I had a CT scan after an accident, and no one told me what contrast is going to feel like, the nurse simply injected me without any explanation.
And omfg, that might’ve been one of the scariest 30 seconds of my life. It felt like I was injected with straight up lava. My whole body was burning from the inside, and I felt like I would just spontaneously combust any second. It very quickly subsided though and there was no negative reaction overall, just higher sensitivity than average. But holy shit, I would want to know about stuff like this beforehand.
this could be a big life saver if it’s small, cheap and safe enough for doctors offices to have so they can triage patients and quickly refer them to hospital when needed rather than having to book an appointment for a scan. Could even become a standard part of a routine medical check-up to test for signs of aortic aneurysms or similar, that could be a huge life saver.
from what they say i wonder if it’ll be useful tied to a machine able to do near-autonomous endovascular surgery? that could really help reduce surgery wait times and improve a lot of peoples lives.
Assuming it takes off in the US, cost may be a more defining factor than usefulness. There’s a reason MRIs are giant ATMs, unfortunately. This may actually be one of the few times the EU has better accessibility since Germany funded the research.
Very exciting.
Phone friendlier links: Archive.ph, Archive.org
Just wish I hadn’t opened that site in Safari on iPhone first, putting it in reader mode crashed it so hard I had to restart my phone.
Firefox reader mode worked splendidly. Just sayin’
