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Science Technology

Portable Brain Scanner to Save Premature Babies 93

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the monstir-in-my-pocket dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at UCL (University College London) are developing a portable brain scanner which could help save the lives of premature and newborn babies in intensive care by avoiding to move them to conventional scanning facilities. A current prototype combines the advantages of both magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound. It uses optical tomography to generate images showing how the brain is working and a new generation should be ready by 2008 and such scanners should be commercially available shortly after."
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Portable Brain Scanner to Save Premature Babies More

Portable Brain Scanner to Save Premature Babies

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  • Not just babies (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brohan ( 773443 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @04:43PM (#14337022) Homepage
    Small portable MRI's could not be used only for babies.

    I've got a problem with my knee, which was diagnosed without actually *seeing* it through an x-ray machine. With the resolution of an MRI it would likley be visible. Assuming my knee is as big as a babies head, this could be used in orthapedic applications as well.

    From the pictures in the article, I figure its big enough to fit most limbs in it.

    • Sorry it's no real MRI (Score:4, Informative)

      by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @05:27PM (#14337158) Homepage
      Problem is : it's not a real MRI. A portative MRI would be a REAL public danger because it has to generate ultra-strong magnetic fields to function properly [wikipedia.org].

      This is just a bunch of lasers shining light through their target.
      It only works on newborns' head because :
      - Their skull is thin on most places and even un-fused in some places : light can easily go in.
      - Their head is small so that the laser travels a short path and isn't absorbed that much and therefor still caries useful information when going out.

      It's unusable for knees because they're to big and the bone is WAY to thick (one of the thickest. Remember : it has to support your body's weight).
      • Actually, there are portable MRI systems http://www.mri4ra.com/ [mri4ra.com] and they are not a safety hazard because a) their magnetic fields are 7x smaller than standard clinical MRIs and b) the field doesn't extend very far beyond the actual equipment.

        These systems are typically designed for use on extremities and so would meet the request of the grandparent poster. However, the images are not nearly as good as a standard MRI for a few reasons:

        1) To a first approximation, 7x smaller magnetic field means 49x l
    • Maybe Tom Cruise can buy one so he and Katie can see what the hell's wrong with him in the comfort of their own home.

      Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night. (Metaphorically.)
      • The optical tomography box might only show activity when Tom jumps up and down on the couch. The rest of the time, it would be robotic programed responses. ("Tom, act anger." "Tom, act happy." "Tom, act hatred towards the Enemies of Scientology.")

  • Sometimes I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the_humeister ( 922869 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @04:45PM (#14337029)
    Being in the medical field, I can't help but wonder about the discrepancy between people wanting lower health care costs and their expectations for modern health care to perform miracles. They seem to me to be mutually exclusive. While innovative technologies such as the one described in the article are fascinating, it will surely drive up NICU costs even more if it is adopted. Of course ICUs in general are money sinks anyway.
    • The concern that this innovation will raise costs is important. A few things to factor in, though:

      These babies are generally very ill and are on ventilators with monitoring of heart, respirations, blood oxygen, and often blood carbon dioxide. They will have a line in the umbilical artery and/or vein used for hydration, medications, and drawing of frequent tests as well as monitoring of arterial and/or venous pressure.

      In order to take them to a scanner located on the other side of the hospital, all this n

    • I can't help but wonder about the discrepancy between people wanting lower health care costs and their expectations for modern health care to perform miracles.
      I know! What is WITH people always demanding lower prices AND better products/services? Pick ONE, folks!
    • I was under the impression that healthcare costs are sky-high because of people who sue when ANYTHING goes wrong, or could even be construed as having gone wrong, whether or not you could have done anything. This then forces everyone in the hospital to carry an unbelievable amount of insurance. Think of the cost of an NMR scanner's coolant for a year VS the operator's insurance.

      Am I wrong?
      • I was under the impression that healthcare costs are sky-high because of people who sue when ANYTHING goes wrong, or could even be construed as having gone wrong, whether or not you could have done anything. This then forces everyone in the hospital to carry an unbelievable amount of insurance. Think of the cost of an NMR scanner's coolant for a year VS the operator's insurance.

        I think that the insurance issue is less important than the greed of many people in the health care industry. Health insurance comp
        • To be fair, hospitals actually get much less than they charge for due to negotiations with insurance companies and the fact that medicare pays a set amount no matter what the hospital or doctor charges.

        • I think that the insurance issue is less important than the greed of many people in the health care industry.

          Most of this care is paid for by Medicaid. Medicaid is run by cheapskates, and IIUC hospitals tend to run a loss on Medicaid patients.

          I'll bet that the real problem is more that these babies are just very, very expensive to treat. Given that their treatment causes them pain and they are still likely to wind up with serious disabilities or brain damage due to their condition, we should ask ourselv

          • Hm. Troll?

            There are lots of things that are bad, like slavery and infanticide, which does not collapse civilsations. You don't have to look at blacks/neonates/whatever as fellow humans to be successful.

            Anyway, even very early prematures can avoid brain damage. I personally know one who was born before 28 weeks, the legal abortion limit in the UK. She's entirely normal, higher education and all.

            • There are lots of things that are bad, like slavery and infanticide, which does not collapse civilsations.

              Massive wastage of resources does. Remember, this is not an issue of what to do, this is an issue of when not to do anything.

              Anyway, even very early prematures can avoid brain damage. I personally know one who was born before 28 weeks...

              That's not "very early" as things go today; try 22-24 weeks. Lung maturity is the major issue and the lungs develop relatively late (it's thought to be one of the

  • I wonder if it looks like a salt shaker and makes a high-pitched whistling noise when waved over the body. I saw these being used back on TV in the sixties.
  • I read "portable MRI" in the slashdot post and hoped "Cool ! Small portable device needing to generate ultra-strong several Tesla magnetic field [wikipedia.org] for their function !".
    But, no, after RTFA I discovered that it's just some device using regular light to look through babies' skulls.
    Too bad. No "magnetic gun" involved. Still haven't found what to put on the heads of my Sharks.

    I, for one, do *NOT* welcome my new "magnet of doom"-equipped pediatrician colleagues overlords.

  • MRI's (Score:2, Insightful)

    by TheUncleD ( 940548 )
    For babies it would provide an excellent advantage to predicting the right treatments early on in development. It's too bad that brain damage cannot be forseen early on in pregnancy and averted through re-correction of certain DNA modifications. That's sci-fi though for you. MRIS fall under the radiology/xray world. They are actually fairly new in terms of technology and now can provide fairly accurate brain scans although a lot remains to be understood about the data they feed back. MRI's were first disco
  • When an impromptu demonstration of the device on technology reporter, CmdrTaco, from a popular website "Slashdot.org" produced this startling result [webinchains.it].

  • MRI helped save my twins (Score:4, Interesting)

    by core ( 3330 ) on Sunday December 25, 2005 @05:26PM (#14337154) Homepage
    I'm a dad of twin girls born very prematurely and with an extreme low weight (2 pounds each, basically). They stayed one month in ICU with dedicated monitoring 24/7. Today they're 18 months old, completely healthy with no sequels of their prematurity, partly because they had all the equipment at the ICU (MRI notably); if they moved the girls to a conventional facility they would have been in great danger. Needless to say I'm eternally grateful to medical advancements and the medical personnel that provides the care; I live in a country where we pay taxes through the nose, but I don't mind paying taxes for that purpose :)

    Best regards,
    Emmanuel
    • I'm a dad of triplet girls born at 24 weeks. All together they weighed less than 3 1/2 lbs. The smallest one did not survive, but the other two did, and they're doing great at nearly 2 years (20 mo adjusted), though they spent 4 months and 8 months in the NICU.

      More accurate scanning without having to leave the NICU means that parents can have more information about their children when making life or death decisions. Parents do need advice from doctors, and there is such a thing as care that is decidedly "fu
  • ...if you collect six of them you can turn them in for a free taco!
  • We're all talking about NATURAL selection these days, (vs ID). Well guess what we're doing with the miracles of modern medicine?

    Breaking the natural selection. All kinds of diseases have gone up and we all attribute this to the worse conditions we live in. Noone seems to notice that due to modern medicine, more sick people survive, have children and contribute to the problem.

    Now of course it's a huge moral dilemma. If something happens with a human I care about, would I let him/her go if it helps some abstr
    • I've thought about this too. I think that the irony here is that by letting more people survive, humans are more likely to be wiped out by a new disease appearing that we can't treat. That being said, many geniuses and people who have contributed greatly to different things have been afflicted by problems solved or lessened by modern medicine/psychology/etc. If they had lived a few hundred years ago, they probably wouldn't have lived long enough to contribute anything, or they would've been labeled "reta
      • Not true. By supporting people with genetic differerences that would not otherwise be likely to survive we are increasing the diversity in the gene pool and so are decreasing the chance that a disease could wipe us all out. For example, sickle cell anemia is most undesireable to have in a western city. However, if there's a malaria outbreak, it's a GREAT trait to have.

        Not that a disease ever could wipe us all out -- by the time you kill a decent fraction of the people you'll have thinned them out enough
    • Actually, we are not breaking natural selection (or otherwise acting in opposition to the laws of nature) simply because there's nothing in the theory that categorically states "it's only natural if humans don't do it." Helping the weak is not a purely human characteristic in any case -- it's a known survival technique practiced by many K-strategist [wikipedia.org] species.

      I'm not going to claim that there aren't disadvantages to "artificially" prolonging the lives of the weak and sickly, nor will I suggest that we sho
      • "Nature, if I can personify it here for a second, doesn't care if we're wracked with diseases or living in squalor. As long as we keep having the requisite 2 or more children before biting the dust, we're doing exactly what we're supposed to, just like every other species on the planet."

        Correct, nature doesn't care, but you do, because it's pretty different being busy all day making enough money so you can buy yourself medicines and medical procedures to survive, versus just being healthy.
    • Breaking the natural selection.

      Which is a very arrogant thing to say. It assumes we are somehow 'not natural'. We are not the only animals to use medication - many others know which plants to eat or what to do to help cure illnesses.

      Humans using their natural brains to help ill people is entirely natural.
      • "We are not the only animals to use medication - many others know which plants to eat or what to do to help cure illnesses."

        Do you actually know what plants to eat, or instead rely on extremely complex and fragile infrastructure or medical help and drug production.

        Thing is, all those advancements are easy to break, fine natural or not, but if it keeps going like this it'll be the equivalent of not being able to breath unless you're hooked to the Internet... You wouldn't want the router to go down, would you
        • Thing is, all those advancements are easy to break, fine natural or not, but if it keeps going like this it'll be the equivalent of not being able to breath unless you're hooked to the Internet... You wouldn't want the router to go down, would you.

          It is hardly like that for most people most of the time. But so what if it is, as long as we have backup systems? After all, look at the number of people who fly - and that is certainly a fragile situation (it certainly scares me).
      • I doh know, that seems to be the generally accepted meaning of natural: not manmade or man's doing.
    • Um, we haven't had the ability to save the lives of those suffering from lethal genetic diseases that manifest before reproductive age for long enough to have any noticeable effect on the gene pool. Evolution takes thousands of generations. We've had less than ten since they gave up on bleeding people.

      Before your scenario becomes a problem we'll have the ability to patch our genes and avoid it entirely.
    • You mean GATTACA. Come on man.. the whole point of the title is that it relates to DNA sequencing...
  • I don't see many comments on the really interesting point of this story, a fourth non-invasive technology to view the insides of the human body. X-ray, ultrasound and MRI are commonly used for this purpose. It's exciting to speculate on other clinical applications for this new tech.
  • From the article: "A prototype of the scanner, called MONSTIR..."

    Ok, even though I have somewhat of a background in usability and marketing, I don't think I need to point out what may be a funny point in selling this technology...

    Doc: Ok ma'am, things might look GRIM, but don't worry, we're going to attach our newest, greatest technology to your baby's head and blast the little meatbag with rays to get a good look at what is going on!

    Mother: Um.. this sounds a little unsafe..

    Doc: Don't worry, wi
  • Researchers at UCL are developing a portable brain scanner

    I was going to report back on the one I got today, but Santa forgot to leave the right size lithium thionyl chloride batteries. [maxell.co.jp]

  • Spock was doing better stuff than this in the 60's...
  • Unfortunately, this should have been invented ways earlier, so the world could have been saved from Roland Piquepaille.

    Have a look at the website he links from his name: he simply reposts his own blog entries verbatim here on Slashdot.

  • Interesting article. What's special about this is that it represents functional, not anatomic, imaging of the brain. Bedside neonatal head imaging is currently dominated by ultrasound, useful in identifying areas of hemorrhage most common in preemies. MRI is also useful in neonates, but again usually looking for hemorrhage or abnormalities of brain morphology.

    This technique uses light attenuation to measure oxygen consumption in the brain. Hemoglobin (Hb) is the oxygen-carrying molecule in blood. It can bin
  • Here is an idea: someone develop a cheap (price in the hundreds of ) ultrasound device that can be hooked up to a regular pc USB port.

    Write up some open source software to go with it (so anyone can improve upon it).

    Save the world and make lots of money.

    Though it might cause men to become an overwhelming majority in some poor countries, the benefits would be enourmous.
    • I suspect that do it yourself plans for ultrasound devices probably exist on the web somewhere. EEG plans certainly do. You can build an EEG for about $20 worth of parts if you have a bit of basic soldering or wire wrap ability. Why do hospitals pay $50,000 for their EEG units? Because they're certified for use on patients. If you really want to save the world then fight the lawyers, courts and greedy people who make it necessary for medical devices to cost so much.

      An ultrasound scanner is a power supp

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