4 ms·

As someone with an undiagnosed neurological illness, it would be fun if I could run my MRI backups through it.

andbberger 7y ago
I believe the main aim of this project is to accelerate the imaging process itself and not diagnostics. It's a natural research direction to accelerate imaging; MRI is fundamentally limited in its data acquisition rate. You are essentially giving protons a wack into an excited state and extracting spatial information by listening to how they decay. There is a time constant associated with this decay that just comes from the physics and can't be reduced, and you have to wait for the decay to be more or less complete before you can give another wack and acquire another slice. MRI already relies on classical compressed sensing to overcome this limitation and make imaging feasible at all, but there is good reason to think that you can do better than classical compressed sensing by making use of prior knowledge of the physics of the imaging process and the structure of natural tissue.
pc86 7y ago
How do you know you have an illness if it's undiagnosed?
- y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
  When you have chronic (years) of decreased sensation in the limbs, coordination and balance problems, half of the throat paralyzed, constantly pissing oneself, cognitive issues, etc, and they can't find a reason for it then it's an illness with verifiable symptoms but has not been diagnosed. People with spine issues, MS, Lyme, and Lupus for example usually refer to it as "limbo land". Neurological diseases are notoriously difficult to diagnose and often go without an official diagnoses for months, years, and even decades.
abrichr 7y ago
I've been thinking about this type of use case recently. I'm curious, how many MRI scans do you have? How do you store and view them? Have you applied any computer vision techniques to them? Thanks!
- y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
  Sorry for the delayed response. I have multiple MRIs of my brain and the entirety of my spine, most of them at 3T. I got them stored as ISO copies of the CD they made for me. I have no idea where to begin by applying computer vision. If you can point me in that direction, I would be happy to try. EDIT: As for viewing, they come with a proprietary viewer loaded on the CD. I do have the ability to export them as JPG image stacks though.
  - abrichr 7y ago
    Thanks for the info! Regarding using computer vision, the question to ask is: what do you want to know about the content of your scans? For example, if you have multiple scans over time, do you want to see how the structures are changing? Or if it's just one or two points in time, do you want to know the names of the structures? I've been working in medical imaging and deep learning for years, and have recently become disillusioned by the technology's potential to disrupt the radiology industry. But I wonder if there aren't alternative use cases for e.g. educational purposes. I'd love to know more about what you wish you could do or know! Please feel free to email me.

I believe the main aim of this project is to accelerate the imaging process itself and not diagnostics. It's a natural research direction to accelerate imaging; MRI is fundamentally limited in its data acquisition rate. You are essentially giving protons a wack into an excited state and extracting spatial information by listening to how they decay. There is a time constant associated with this decay that just comes from the physics and can't be reduced, and you have to wait for the decay to be more or less complete before you can give another wack and acquire another slice. MRI already relies on classical compressed sensing to overcome this limitation and make imaging feasible at all, but there is good reason to think that you can do better than classical compressed sensing by making use of prior knowledge of the physics of the imaging process and the structure of natural tissue.

pc86 7y ago

How do you know you have an illness if it's undiagnosed?

y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
When you have chronic (years) of decreased sensation in the limbs, coordination and balance problems, half of the throat paralyzed, constantly pissing oneself, cognitive issues, etc, and they can't find a reason for it then it's an illness with verifiable symptoms but has not been diagnosed. People with spine issues, MS, Lyme, and Lupus for example usually refer to it as "limbo land". Neurological diseases are notoriously difficult to diagnose and often go without an official diagnoses for months, years, and even decades.

abrichr 7y ago

I've been thinking about this type of use case recently. I'm curious, how many MRI scans do you have? How do you store and view them? Have you applied any computer vision techniques to them? Thanks!

y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
Sorry for the delayed response. I have multiple MRIs of my brain and the entirety of my spine, most of them at 3T. I got them stored as ISO copies of the CD they made for me. I have no idea where to begin by applying computer vision. If you can point me in that direction, I would be happy to try. EDIT: As for viewing, they come with a proprietary viewer loaded on the CD. I do have the ability to export them as JPG image stacks though.
- abrichr 7y ago
  Thanks for the info! Regarding using computer vision, the question to ask is: what do you want to know about the content of your scans? For example, if you have multiple scans over time, do you want to see how the structures are changing? Or if it's just one or two points in time, do you want to know the names of the structures? I've been working in medical imaging and deep learning for years, and have recently become disillusioned by the technology's potential to disrupt the radiology industry. But I wonder if there aren't alternative use cases for e.g. educational purposes. I'd love to know more about what you wish you could do or know! Please feel free to email me.