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Brain images just got 64 million times sharper
- stansler 4y agoWould be nice to have a better resolution for a sample video on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtOQddvp_U4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtOQddvp_U4), 64 million times sharper, but video quality is only 240p :)
- Retric 4y agoI don’t know if they can. 240 cubed is ~14 million while a mouse Brian only has 8–14 million neurons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_brain
- DefineOutside 4y agoIf you render a 240p video as 4k on youtube - the bitrate will be much higher and it will be less compressed than if it is uploaded as a 240p video.
- detrites 4y agoWell something isn't adding up. How can 14 million pixels be 64 million times more pixels? Were mouse brain images just one giant pixel previously?
- Retric 4y ago> How can 14 million pixels be 64 million times more pixels? It’s Voxels not pixels. Voxels are 3D objects so to be clear this particular advancement isn’t 64 million (roughly 400 in each linear dimension^3) times better than the best that came before. Think 400x400 = 160,000 more pixels and 400 times as many slices. Also the comparison is to a “typical clinical MRI for humans” which not only have 10 billion neurons but also tend to have relatively few slices. There’s little point in having people spend hours in a machine if a faster scan with fewer slices is good enough. Anyway, while the point of comparison is suspect this is still a major improvement over earlier methods just look at the by comparison low resolution images in this paper from 2005. https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/15/5/639/442213?login=false https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/15/5/639/442213?logi...
- detrites 4y agoAlright, thanks. To be clear I used the term "pixels" in describing the characteristics of the final images produced, which are a series of stacked 2D images comprised of pixels. But, I don't think it matters what we label the units we're counting, as long as we count them accurately. The paper you've referenced states: > field-of-view = 12 × 12 × 24 mm and matrix size = 200 × 200 × 400 giving an image with (60μm)[cubed] isotropic voxels The "64 million times better" article states a resolution of 5μm voxels (for one aspect of the imaging). The paper the article references, by contrast, states 15μm when specifically comparing to MRI, and claims 1,000x improvement. Diambiguating what is meant by "resolution" is a common problem, as it can refer to either the length of the axes or the overall area when multiplying them. Conservatively, I'm going with 12x better resolution with the new technique when comparing apples to apples, or, to hype it reasonably: 5 cubed vs 60 cubed = a difference of 1,728 times more voxels in the same given area.
- throitallaway 4y agoYou're probably being snarky, but that completely disregards compression. The artifacts on the video are atrocious. An uncompressed 480p stream is worlds different from a compressed 480p stream.
- maxmcd 4y agoBetter video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4WvWIJCFJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4WvWIJCFJc
- throitallaway 4y agoThanks. This one also has a banger sound track!
- robwwilliams 4y agoAl Johnson (senior author) is assembling some better images and fly-throughs of the brains—both MRI and lightsheet. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqmLBXTL-Vs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqmLBXTL-Vs
- mysterydip 4y agoI didn't know who Chuck Close was to appreciate the article's metaphor, so for those wondering: "Close was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very large format camera."
- FriedPickles 4y agoClicked on this expecting to read about an AI enhancement technique. Was very refreshing to read about actual hardware improvements.
- dontwearitout 4y ago5 micron voxels is extremely impressive. I'm excited to see where this goes!
- Udo 4y agoOne more leap like this and we'll be able to resolve individual dendrites and obtain a complete connectome. Combined with microscopic slices (with suitable immunohistological staining), we'd be getting close to obtaining the data necessary for brain uploading - at least in mice.
- kevviiinn 4y agoWhat do you mean by brain uploading
- 22c 4y agoThe keyword is connectome[1]. The theory is that if you can reproduce a connectome 1:1 then you can basically make an exact replica of a mind. Think of it like how you might be able to reverse engineer and recreate a microchip from high enough resolution imagery of an existing microchip. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectome
- kevviiinn 4y agoYes, I'm aware of what the connectome is. Someone in my lab is working on a piece of it. My question was regarding the term upload, most people don't mean a replica when they use that term One thing that the MRI studies don't address are the types of synaptic connections. Neurons aren't all just excitatory of inhibitory. There's a massive amount of modulation happen with numerous types of neurotransmitters and other signaling molecules.
- davycro 4y agoI’ve always wanted to have an MRI. I want to know how it feels to have all of my protons reoriented by a giant magnet. Would I be the same person after?
- jjtheblunt 4y agoThe only thing you feel is heated a bit in my experience (sports injuries, torso and sinuses). However if they use contrast it might have lasting effects. I only had that once and swear it made me feel dopey for weeks.
- scythe 4y agoIf you had nanoparticle contrast (ferumoxytol) it very well could have stuck around for weeks. Gadolinium chelate contrast is supposed to wash out in a few days, though.
- yalue 4y agoHaving to hold perfectly still (possibly in an uncomfortable pose) in a giant machine that's making loud, uncanny noises for 20+ minutes is indeed a very bizarre, meditative experience. It is interesting, but, in my opinion, you're probably going to be happier not having the health concerns that lead to getting an MRI in the first place!
- cj 4y agoI had a MRI in college as part of a psychology experiment. If you can get into one of those studies, it's a free way to get a picture of your brain! I think I may have skewed their results, though. MRI is a very meditative experience and I'm pretty sure I fell asleep for brief moments when I was (supposed to be) memorizing and recalling pictures and words they were showing me on a monitor as part of the university experiment.
- nuancebydefault 4y agoIndeed it tends to be meditative, especially because you have nothing else to do then holding still and relax.
- nick__m 4y ago9.4 T is quite a strong magnetic field, as it is half the strength of the magnetic field used for plasma confinement in Tokamak Energy’s Demo4 facility. Scaling this technology for human-sized animals will likely be incredibly expensive, but the 5 micron accuracy is surely worth the investment.
- echo_time 4y ago7T is already regularly used for human research, and approval for human usage has been granted for 10.5T and I believe for 11.7T (though I'm not sure how many images they've gotten out of that yet). Yes it is incredibly expensive, but it is in fact already done.
- legerdemain 4y agoWhat's the bore diameter for a 7T or a 10T magnet? All of the ones I've seen wouldn't be wide enough for an adult human.
- echo_time 4y agoThey are human size research (and now clinical, albeit limited so far) magnets, so big enough, think about 60cm. It's an elbow rubbing environment, but sufficient for even somewhat large adults. The animals magnets are super tiny, of course.
- legerdemain 4y agoI see a 7T model from Siemens with a standard 60cm bore. Interesting!
- westurner 4y agohttps://thedebrief.org/impossible-photonic-breakthrough-scientists-manipulate-light-at-sub-wavelength-scale/ https://thedebrief.org/impossible-photonic-breakthrough-scie... : > For decades, that [Abbe diffraction] limit has operated as a sort of roadblock to engineering materials, drugs, or other objects at scales smaller than the wavelength of light manipulating them. But now, the researchers from Southampton, together with scientists from the universities of Dortmund and Regensburg in Germany, have successfully demonstrated that a beam of light can not only be confined to a spot that is 50 times smaller than its own wavelength but also “in a first of its kind” the spot can be moved by minuscule amounts at the point where the light is confined. > According to that research, the key to confining light below the previous impermeable Abbe diffraction limit was accomplished by “storing a part of the electromagnetic energy in the kinetic energy of electric charges.” This clever adaptation, the researchers wrote, “opened the door to a number of groundbreaking real-world applications, which has contributed to the great success of the field of nanophotonics.” > “Looking to the future, in principle, it could lead to the manipulation of micro and nanometre-sized objects, including biological particles,” De Liberato says, “or perhaps the sizeable enhancement of the sensitivity resolution of microscopic sensors.” "Electrons turn piece of wire into laser-like light source" (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33493885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33493885 Could such inexpensive coherent laser light sources reduce medical and neuroimaging costs? "A simple technique to overcome self-focusing, filamentation, supercontinuum generation, aberrations, depth dependence and waveguide interface roughness using fs laser processing" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&hl=en&as_sdt=5,47&sciodt=0,47&cites=11686473802297914479&scipsc= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&hl=en&as_sdt=5,4... : > Several detrimental effects limit the use of ultrafast lasers in multi-photon processing and the direct manufacture of integrated photonics devices, not least, dispersion, aberrations, depth dependence, undesirable ablation at a surface, limited depth of writing, nonlinear optical effects such as supercontinuum generation and filamentation due to Kerr self-focusing. We show that all these effects can be significantly reduced if not eliminated using two coherent, ultrafast laser-beams through a single lens - which we call the Dual-Beam technique. Simulations and experimental measurements at the focus are used to understand how the Dual-Beam technique can mitigate these problems. The high peak laser intensity is only formed at the aberration-free tightly localised focal spot, simultaneously, suppressing unwanted nonlinear side effects for any intensity or processing depth. Therefore, we believe this simple and innovative technique makes the fs laser capable of much more at even higher intensities than previously possible, allowing applications in multi-photon processing, bio-medical imaging, laser surgery of cells, tissue and in ophthalmology, along with laser writing of waveguides. TL Transfer Learning might be useful for training a model to predict e.g. [portable] low-field MRI with NIRS Infrared and/or Ultrasound? FWIU, "Mind2Mind" is one way to ~train a GAN from another already-trained GAN? From https://twitter.com/westurner/status/1609498590367420416 https://twitter.com/westurner/status/1609498590367420416 : > Idea: Do sensor fusion with all available sensors timecoded with landmarks, and then predict the expensive MRI/CT from low cost sensors > Are there implied molecular structures that can be inferred from low-cost {NIRS, Light field, [...]} sensor data? > Task: Learn a function f() such that f(lowcost_sensor_data) -> expensive_sensor_data FWIU OpenWater has moved to NIRS+Ultrasound for ~ live in surgery MRI-level imaging and now treatment? FWIU certain Infrared light wavelengths cause neuronal growth; and Blue and Green inhibit neuronal growth. What are the comparative advantage and disadvantages of these competing medical imaging and neuroimaging capabilities?
- w-m 4y ago64e6^(1/3) = 400, in case you were wondering. So I would take it that clinical MRI voxels measure 2 mm (400 * 5 um) usually? The article does a really bad job at explaining the number from their headline.
- echo_time 4y agoClinical scanners often use 2mm isotropic voxels, or even 3. Clinical usage is almost a bad reference point!. Research MRI at ultra high field (7T) goes to 0.8mm isotropic and below (0.5 or 0.6 is possible).
- jonnycomputer 4y agoIn the research setting, if a structural MRI is being acquired for anatomical research, they'll go below than by more than half. We acquire 2mm voxel structural MRIs since we only use it to help us find a warp from subject space to template space in fMRI analysis.
- SubiculumCode 4y agoI wonder if this resolution is possible only when the fov is about the size of a mouse brain. Also, I bet the bore is tiny. However, I didnt think 9.4T was enough.
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- danbruc 4y agoI case somebody else wonders, here [1] are some electron microscope pictures of neurons [and other stuff] to better understand what 5 µm voxels means. Seems about one order of magnitude away from being able to image all the connections. [1] https://www.canadiannaturephotographer.com/rberdan_scanning_electron_microscopy2017.html https://www.canadiannaturephotographer.com/rberdan_scanning_...
- CamperBob2 4y agoThat photo about halfway down the page, wow. Absolute maximum creepiness.
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago> The eyes of my wife were added in the darkroom before the days of Photoshop and the image is titled "Donna". ...but why? The image was probably far more impactful pre-Photoshop; today a pocket-carried device can do that automatically, live, at 1080p/60fps.
- skybrian 4y agoThis seems to be a process that can be used on dead mouse brains. It doesn't sound like it will be used for live animals or human cadavers anytime soon?
- robwwilliams 4y agoNo: too much motion artifact.
- Animats 4y agoThat's useful. 5 microns is very good. Probably more than is needed for medical purposes. Some intermediate level between current technology and this scale is a useful product.
- drcode 4y agoMice brains are a lot easier to image than human brains afaik, solely because they can fit into such a tiny MRI tube, with far simpler magnets. So if any mouse MRI tech is scaled to a human device, it will almost certainly have far less resolution.
- RektBoy 4y agoVideo with a title "Brain images just got 64 million times sharper", in 240p ...killed me, hhehehe.
- maxmcd 4y agoBetter link with better video: https://today.duke.edu/2023/04/brain-images-just-got-64-million-times-sharper https://today.duke.edu/2023/04/brain-images-just-got-64-mill...
- diogopublio 4y agolove the psychedelic image and music, tech product announcements kind lost their souls lately
- svag 4y agoSo, if the normal MRI machines are the Hubble of medical imaging, this new MRI machine is the James Webb of medical imaging?
- robwwilliams 4y agoThat metaphor might work if you add in the lightsheet microscopy. The combination of modalities and the alignment accuracy is transformative.
- jonnycomputer 4y agoSuch resolution will be largely wasted if the object in the scanner does not remain still. Humans do not remains still.
- lumenwrites 4y agoCan a technology like this at some point be used for brain uploads? Or like a cheaper and better version of cryonics - to "backup" the brain until it can be resurrected in some way?
- westurner 4y agoIf quantum information is never destroyed – and classical information is quantum information without the complex term i – perhaps our brain states are already preserved in the universe; like reflections in water droplets in the quantum foam. Lagrangian points, non-intersecting paths through accretion discs, and microscopic black holes all preserve data - modulated energy; information - for some time before reversible or unreversible transformation. Perhaps Superfluid quantum gravity can afford insight into the interior topology of black holes and other quantum foam phenomena? (Edit) Coping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coping Defence mechanisms § Level 4: mature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism#Level_4:_mature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism#Level_4:_mat...
- JackFr 4y agoHow do you measure sharpness? It's pretty impressive to say that the linear resolution increased 400x, but I guess at 400x it's barely even clickbait. It's far more impressive to cube it and claim 64000000x improvement.
- dosshell 4y agoWell, do you think a 4 Megapixel camera sensor has 2x resolution compared to a 2 MP? If no, I agree with you, but if it indeed does... Why should we not compare resolution in the higest dimension here too? We already have a term for linear resolution, voxel size. (But yes. I agree with your clickbait argument here. Could have been better to use voxel size in the heading)
- ravenstine 4y agoAnd they couldn't provide a better quality JPEG...
- NeuroCoder 4y agoThis is interesting for basic research but this strategy is unlikely to ever make it to human research. We need to find ways of extracting more information at reasonable Tesla. 9T just isn't gonna make its way to clinic
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago(Obligatory "in mice") but very exciting nonetheless. And not just brains. I'm rather excited to see literal guts at a whole new level of detail.
- akozak 4y agoLot of folks seems to be missing the fact that they slice the brain up afterwards and merge those scans with the MRI data.
- robwwilliams 4y agoNot physically sliced but optically sliced. Still one intact whole brain.
- akozak 4y agoHuh interesting. Based on my searching it seemed that light sheet microscopy required dealing with brain slices.
- kevviiinn 4y agoFrom the wikipedia page >This method is used in cell biology[2] and for microscopy of intact, often chemically cleared, organs, embryos, and organisms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_sheet_fluorescence_microscopy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_sheet_fluorescence_mic...