Oct 8, 2010 07:03 GMT  ·  By
Experts Vikram Bajaj (left) and Alexander Pines are seen here developing their new version of MRI
   Experts Vikram Bajaj (left) and Alexander Pines are seen here developing their new version of MRI

A team of investigators in the United States announces the development of a type of MRI that functions at unprecedented spatial and time resolutions. It can even “zoom in” on individual molecules.

These improvements were made possible by chemist Alexander Pines, who holds joint appointments with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California in Berkeley (UCB).

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) are at this point two of the main research tools that experts have for studying material structures.

This can be done at both the atomic and molecular scales, but scientists have been trying to improve these technologies constantly. More observation power equals more details, and more knowledge.

Pines' team actually managed to improve NMR/MRI technologies, by a factor of about a million. The expert is one of the foremost international authorities in this field of research.

Underlying the improved technologies is a carefully-balanced combination of remote instrumentation, JPEG-style image compression algorithms, and other enhancements, Pines says.

When put to work, the new approach allowed investigators to look at substances flowing through microfluidic devices with unprecedented spatial and time resolutions.

“What excites me most about this new methodology is the possibility of a mobile, chip-based NMR/MRI platform for microfluidic analysis,” Pines says.

“Who knows? This might turn out to be useful for chemistry and biomedicine,” adds the expert, who is an internationally recognized leader in the development of NMR technology.

He is a a faculty senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division, and is also theGlenn T. Seaborg Professor of Chemistry at UCB.

Details of the improvements were published in a paper entitled “Zooming in on Microscopic Flow by Remotely Detected MRI,” which appears in the latest issue of the journal Science.

“We have been able to conclusively demonstrate the ability to record microscopic images of flowing macroscopic objects without loss of sensitivity, something that is impossible in conventional MRI,” adds expert Vikram Bajaj.

“We were also able to illustrate how MRI can be used to measure flow dynamics quantitatively and with high spatial resolution in real microfluidic devices,” he argues.

“The spatial resolution we achieved is sufficient to capture the results of hundreds or thousands of parallel assays on a microfluidic device,” concludes Bajaj, who is the first author of the Science paper, and a member of Pines' research group.