The problem with superheroes is that they don't exist. However, thanks to science and technology we can make their super powers a reality. X-ray vision and mind reading are only a couple of the powers the engineers over at the MRI Research Center have; but most importantly, they have the power to save lives.
Dr. Thomas S. Denney Jr., director of Auburn University's MRI Research Center, has been researching the heart using magnetic resonance imaging for about 20 years. His research involves how the heart changes shape and contraction patterns in response to disease.
Auburn's MRI Research Center is one of the most advanced imaging centers in the world in terms of the technology used. At a cost between eight and nine million dollars, and with only 50 in existence, the MRI Center's 7-Tesla MRI scanner has the magnetic power equivalent to the power necessary to pick up approximately seven cars, according to Nikhil Jha, a graduate student in electrical engineering.
"Most scanners only image protons that are the nuclei of hydrogen atoms in water molecules in the body," said Denney, "That's hydrogen or proton MRI. That's what 95 percent of all MRI scanners do. Our 7-Tesla can do that as well, but our 7-Tesla can also image other nuclei from other atoms in the body."
To be more specific, Denney is looking for phosphorus in the body.
"The energy that fuels your muscles are high energy phosphates," said Denney "We can image the high energy phosphates metabolism in your muscles. But we are particularly interested in measuring it in the heart."
Denney's research into high energy phosphate metabolism in the heart can lead to intervention and treatment of heart failure.
"There is a hypothesis that heart failure is like an engine that's out of fuel," said Denney, "So what we are doing with this imaging technique is we're imaging the fuel that the heart muscle runs on. The idea is that if we could detect an early drop in that fuel, we could intervene earlier and possibly do a better job treating the patient."
While Denney is focused on the heart, Doctor Gopikrishna Deshpande, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is focused on the brain.
"With the brain MRI, my focus really is developing signal processing algorithms..." said Deshpande, "What essentially is done is, a person goes into the MRI and is asked to do some sort of a task. So if you want to know what area of the brain is involved in tapping a finger, we would ask him to tap his finger for 10 seconds and then do nothing for 10 seconds... We would model the data set we get from that to see in which areas of the brain the signal actually went up when the person was tapping. Then, by reverse inference, we can say that region of the brain is involved in finger tapping. This is the classical 'activation paradigm,' as we call it. But that is not the end of the story. There is something we call 'The Binding Problem.'"
"The Binding Problem" is understanding how the brain takes in many single elements, such as vision, hearing and touch; and perceptions within those such as distinguishing color or motion, and how the brain interprets them as one whole picture. The labor is divided among many parts of the brain and then unified into a single image of how we perceive the world. This also involves cognition. How the brain responds to this information in different ways. Where is this information brought together and then analyzed to determine how to act on it? This involves some sort of "information integration." Deshpande is developing mathematical models of how this information integration happens.
"This has really been shown to be important in understanding many mental disorders," said Deshpande, "Right now, our understanding of what happens in mental disorders is not really advanced."
Deshpande explains how a mechanical understanding of how the brain works can lead to better treatment of mental disorders.
"To give you an example... we know what happens when an artery is blocked," said Deshpande, "Since gaining that mechanistic understanding (of the heart), it has really helped us create solutions. We know that we can bypass that artery, do a surgery and that person is going to live another 20 years. We don't have that kind of mechanistic insight with mental disorders. All the treatments that are being given right now are quite generic. For example, we have chemicals that would impact neurotransmitters across the entire brain. That's why treatments either don't work on everybody, or if it does work, the efficacy is different and the effect wears off."
Gaining a better understanding of how the brain operates will also help in diagnostics.
"From a diagnostic part... take autism," said Deshpande, "They are diagnosed based on behavior... And basically doctors sit there and see how the person is behaving. Based on that, they make the diagnosis. As you can see, that's pretty subjective. So from a diagnostic point, we have to really understand what goes wrong in the brain. If we could really understand that, we could put a person inside the scanner, measure scientifically and objectively a thing inside the brain and say this person has this result. It's like a blood test... And since we know what has gone wrong, we can devise therapies which are really targeted to the problem."
Deshpande is doing more than just trying to understand mental disorders. Through his research he is also able to determine what a person is thinking while they are in an MRI.
Using the 'activation paradigm,' researchers can determine what a person might be thinking based on the areas of the brain that increase their signal. This study is being done in a field called "brain computer interface," and has the potential to help those with physical disabilities.
"...For example, someone who cannot move their hands and wants to interact with a computer," said Deshpande, "If they think 'I want to click this icon,' that has a specific neural signature in the brain. If you can read that and you can use machine learning algorithms to actually understand what that code means, you can actually give an external hardware signal to the computer to do the task."
The MRI Research Center works in unison with member of the Psychology Department. Doctor Jeffrey S. Katz, alumni professor of psychology, works together with the MRI Center to further research in mental disorders like depression, Alzheimer's and PTSD.
"I'm able to take my psychology and work with them to be at the forefront of new scanning techniques," said Katz, "I think it's mutually beneficial because, for the engineers, they can come up with new algorithms; but what they really need to do is test that on something. Typically, testing is done on a phantom, which is a water balloon; but at some point they have to use real humans... So they need people like us over in psychology to run the subjects. They don't have great experience with knowing how to run psychology experiments and knowing how to deal with patients coming in, and we have that skill set."
Katz is currently researching visual working memory in humans. Subjects are placed inside of an MRI and shown two to 10 different items on a screen at one time. After they disappear, they are shown again but one item will have altered. Subjects are then asked if they can detect any change. It has been shown that the capacity for visual working memory is reached at about four of these items.
"It's a measure of how much information you can maintain at one given time," said Katz, "The question is that when people have depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's or any disease that you can think of that affects memory, well what happens to those people when they perform the same types of task? Can we measure the deficits in this task behaviorally and in the brain? So if we can do that and we can show that there are differences across groups, and then what we can do is start working on treatments to help people if we can identify the brain areas. Then we can say, 'How can we enhance their memory to help them process better over time?'"
Katz is performing this research on people through different stages of Alzheimer's. He uses the MRI to check for oscillations of the blood through different parts of the brain in different stages of Alzheimer's to help make better predictions of who might get Alzheimer's.
The MRI Research Center is taking student volunteers to have MRI scans done for their studies. Search for "MRI Research Center" on the University website and click on "Volunteer for a Scan" on the left side of the page to take part in a scan.
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