MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging 2017 | Page 20

The Road to MPI
The Center’s Larry Wald talks Magnetic Particle Imaging and his latest
BRAIN Initiative grant
Members of the MPI group: Erica Mason, Clarissa Cooley, Larry Wald, Emiri Mandeville and Joe Mandeville.
Photo by Caroline Magnain.
Functional MRI has proved a trans-
formative technology, yielding pre-
viously unimaginable insights into
the workings of the brain. But what
if there were another approach, one
with dramatically higher sensitivity,
that could shed even more light on
these mysteries? What might we
learn then?
grant through the National Insti-
tutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative
(Brain Research through Advancing
Innovative Neurotechnologies) that
will support design and construc-
tion of a magnetic particle imaging
(MPI) scanner for imaging of the
human brain. Once completed and
validated, the technology will offer
an exciting new means to study
Larry Wald is aiming to find out.
activity in the brain. Ultimately, it
could replace fMRI as the premier
In late 2017 Wald, the Director of functional neuroimaging tool.
the Magnetic Resonance Physics
& Instrumentation Group in the Magnetic particle imaging is not
Martinos Center, was awarded a entirely unlike magnetic resonance
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imaging. Introduced a little more
than a decade ago, it uses many
of the same principles and shares
many of the same technologies as
the latter imaging modality. MPI
differs in one crucial way, though:
It directly detects the magnetization
of nanoparticles injected into the
body, rather than relying on second-
ary effects of magnetic resonance
relaxation times. Directly imaging
the source of contrast like this is
what allows for the vastly improved
sensitivity.
Today there are maybe a dozen