2024-04-04 23:45:58
The world’s most powerful MRI machine near Paris has captured its first images of the human brain and is expected to enable greater understanding of its functions and some neurodegenerative or psychiatric diseases.
In 2021, researchers from the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Authority, located on the Saclay Plateau in the Essonne region, decided to test the machine on a pumpkin plant, before health authorities gave the green light a while ago to conduct tests on humans.
Over recent months, about twenty healthy volunteers lay inside the opening of the cylindrical device that took pictures of their brains.
Agence France-Presse quoted Alexander Vigneault, a physicist and researcher at the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Authority, as saying: “We have a level of accuracy that we have never reached before.”
The magnetic field of this exceptional magnet reaches 11.7 Tesla, which allows obtaining images ten times more accurate than those currently produced in hospitals, where the power of MRI does not exceed 3 Tesla.
On the Alexandre Vigneault monitor, CT images of the brain are compared to what a 3 or 7 Tesla MRI would have provided.
“With this device, we can see very small vessels that feed the cerebral cortex, or details of the cerebellum that were almost invisible until now,” Vigneault said.
“The accuracy of the device’s images is amazing,” Research Minister Sylvie Ritayo noted. “This global precedent will enable better detection and treatment of brain diseases,” she stressed.
This cylindrical machine, which is five meters long and high, contains a magnet weighing 132 tons. It consists of a pulley through which an electric current of 1,500 amperes flows, and it has an opening of 90 centimeters to accommodate the human body.
Achieving this technical achievement, which came as a result of a French-German partnership, required more than 20 years of research.
The MRI device was named “Isolde,” and it is one of the most prominent achievements of the Neurospin Center for Brain Imaging Research, affiliated with the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Authority, which is headed by neuroscientist Stanislas Duhin.
One of the goals of this advanced MRI device is to gain a better idea of the structure of the brain and the areas that are active in it when performing certain tasks.
Scientists already know that the different types of images that humans can recognize (faces, places, words, etc.) activate different areas of the cerebral cortex.
The Director of Research at the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Authority, the scientific director of the project, Nicolas Poulain, explained that MRI with a power of 11.7 Tesla “allows us to form a better idea of the relationship between the structure of the brain and its cognitive functions, such as reading a book or performing mental arithmetic, for example.”
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2024-04-04 23:45:58