From the October 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

The new enhancement of MUSE technology advances the imaging modality in three key areas. First, it reduces motion artifact, or inconsistencies created in an image when the subject of a scan moves. Second, enhanced MUSE will also be able to integrate multiple types of MR data, such as information on iron levels, gray matter volume and white matter connectivity. The goal is to combine these data in a coherent way so that we can produce high-resolution, motion artifact-free and multicontrast data in 15 minutes, rather than an hour. Third, obtaining such high-resolution images can come with a cost of higher noise level. To address this, enhanced MUSE includes a “denoising” process, which can reduce noise-related errors by up to 90%.

Another trade-off for these accelerated MR data is that they can become geometrically warped due to the scanning pattern used by the equipment. This is problematic because doctors often advise treatments — including surgery, intervention and deep brain stimulus — based on these scans, so precision is key. We’ve found a way to account for that as well: By alternating between scans that move from the top down and scans that move from the bottom up of the raw data collection, the distortions essentially cancel each another out with appropriate post-processing.


The result of all of this? A high-resolution and fast image that’s free from motion-related blur and geometric distortion.

A timeline for progress
In Phase 1 of our five-year project, we will test our methods, including the faster scan speed and the motion correction module, on healthy patient populations to make sure they work successfully and coherently. Then, we plan to acquire MR data from challenging patient populations — including patients at high risk for Parkinson’s disease and in both early and late stages of the disease — and compare their scans to those of healthy patients. We will also view the progression of the disease through a longitudinal study of high-risk patients in years two and five.

Ultimately, we intend for these techniques developed in this work to be useful in the diagnosis, treatment, and treatment evaluation of many other disorders, including both neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and cerebral palsy, and non-neurological conditions, such as those related to the heart or the intestinal tract. Faster MR can not only make clinical diagnosis more efficient, but may also make it possible to better resolve the dynamic processes of human physiology.

About the author: Nan-kuei Chen is an associate professor of biomedical engineering and member of the BIO5 Institute at the University of Arizona.
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