A Georgia researcher has been awarded a US$345,000 grant to refine his patented process to color magnetic resonance images, or MRIs.
Keith Brown, occupational-therapy professor at Brenau University in Gainesville, Georgia, has been developing a method to electronically colorize MRIs for almost a decade. Now that he's secured a patent and a grant from Image Analysis Inc. of Tulsa, Oklahoma, he plans to turn the technology into an automated, easy-to-read system.
With MRIs, radiologists can see inside the body, to locate problems such as injuries or tumors. Most MRIs produce a grayscale image of body tissue, which can be difficult and time-consuming to read. Brown uses a PC to create a color composite from layers -- or slices -- of MRIs.
The process electronically assigns colors to different parts of the scan, thus each color represents the unique features of different types of tissue, such as muscle, brain, or other organs.
Charles Anderson, associate professor of radiology at the University of San Francisco, said color can help to differentiate between organs when viewing an MRI.
"You can have workstations that will allow you to rotate a volume-rendered image around in real time, so you can see it from multiple vantage points. In that case, you would use the colors to identify different organs," Anderson explained. With color, radiologists can also look at function as opposed to anatomy. "You could, for example, use color to show the direction and velocity of blood flow."
If a pathology -- such as a tumor -- is present, Brown said it will show up in an unusual color. Contrast agents, such as gadolinium, will highlight the spot.
Grayscale images show only subtle variations, Brown said, and a successful reading depends on the radiologist's ability to detect variations of gray and compare between 80 and 120 individual gray images.
