Researchers at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, claim to have developed an MRI protocol that significantly boosts the speed of MRI scanning, shortening the scan time required for pediatric patients, according to a new study published this week in Medical Physics.
Led by Dr. Stanley Fricke, the research noted that past attempts to substantially accelerate MRI failed, because gradient pulse sequences can cause twitching or more serious nerve stimulation in patients.
To prevent such potentially dangerous side effects, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European regulators set limits on gradient strength and speed based on older clinical studies that used relatively slow gradients.
The new study uses pulse sequences with rise times 100 times faster than conventional MRI to prove that nerve stimulation could be eliminated with ultrafast magnetic gradients.
Fricke said the new technology could enable the use of MRI as a first-line method of assessing coronary artery disease, improve high-resolution brain mapping, and provide low-cost dental MRI as a potential nonionizing radiation alternative to x-rays.
The ultrastrong and ultrafast gradient technology was produced with instrumentation created by Weinberg Medical Physics, an R&D lab in Bethesda, MD. Last week, the company was granted a patent for methods relating to nonstimulating magnetic gradient generation.
