Nurturing ideas to harvest future technologies

Martin John Graves, PhD

Professor of MR Physics, University of Cambridge Honorary Consultant Clinical Scientist, Cambridge University Hospitals, United Kingdom

Welcome to the autumn edition of SIGNA™ Pulse of MR. Whilst I feel that time has flown rapidly since the previous edition in the spring, I am reassured by the fact that I have at least been guest editor longer than a certain UK Prime Minister has held office. I hope that you all managed to get some time for rest and recuperation over the summer and are now enjoying the harvest season. This edition showcases how many MR centers are reaping the rewards of GE Healthcare’s careful nurturing of ideas and their growth into the latest MR technologies.

Many people are aware of the stunning improvements in image quality introduced by AIR™ Recon DL for 2D imaging sequences. The advantages of AIR™ Recon DL, oZTEo and MSDE are expounded by Dr. Tetsuro Sekine from Nippon Medical School Musashi-kosugi Hospital, while New York Cancer & Blood Specialists (NYCBS) and Dr. Aytekin Oto from the University of Chicago extol the virtues of AIR™ Recon DL for prostate MR imaging. GE Healthcare’s latest AI-enabled MR systems such as the SIGNA™ Hero 3.0T and SIGNA™ Prime 1.5T systems are respectively discussed by the radiology team at Imapôle Lyon - Villeurbanne, France and by Dr. Edgar Gil Rizzatti from the Fleury Group in Brazil. Further examples of the power of AIR™ Recon DL and the SIGNA™ platforms, in general, can be found in the Case Studies section.

Now, with the recent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance, AIR™ Recon DL has been extended to 3D and PROPELLER imaging sequences. The article, Delivering on the promise of more deep-learning-based MR image reconstruction, describes the clinical benefits of these new capabilities. We are eagerly looking forward to using these methods in Cambridge when MR 30 for SIGNA™ becomes available.

Back in Spring 2022, GE launched a social media customer contest for the best oZTEo case study. In this issue, the winner and the four honorable mentions are revealed. All five case studies demonstrate the outstanding capability of oZTEo to render realistic 3D isotropic images of bony pathology.

When I became guest editor, I was very keen that SIGNA™ Pulse of MR showcased some of the outstanding research and innovation work being performed by GE scientists and engineers, as well as customers. I am extremely pleased that we have four excellent articles included in this issue.

Whilst many researchers will be familiar with the EPIC pulse programming environment, they may be less familiar with GE Healthcare’s software development kit (SDK) for offline image reconstruction, or Orchestra. The capability of the Orchestra SDK, and how to get access, is explained in detail in the article, EPIC and Orchestra software development kits lead the way to advancements in MR imaging.

In the article, Looping Star: Sounding out fMRI‡, GE scientists, together with Professor Steve Williams from King’s College London UK, describe the principles and application of the Looping Star method for the near-silent acquisition of fMRI data. This elegant method of acquiring raw data has enormous potential for performing fMRI in subjects for whom the gradient noise of a conventional fMRI acquisition would be intolerable.

The challenge of imaging the microstructure of the brain, particularly in patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), is discussed in the article, The MAGNUS‡ gradients: entering unchartered territory to see what couldn’t be seen before. Scientists and engineers from GE Healthcare and researchers from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) in Bethesda, MD, have been investigating the capability of the MAGNUS ultra-high performance gradient system. This system is designed to allow the acquisition of sub-millimeter, ultra-high b-value, diffusion-weighted imaging, as well as ultra-low velocity encoding methods to help visualise glymphatic flow.

Finally, my colleagues in Cambridge, UK, together with our collaborators in Aarhus, Denmark, have contributed an article titled, Advancing our knowledge of disease using multinuclear spectroscopy and imaging. In the article we discuss the hardware and software capabilities and projects using the SIGNA™ 3.0T platforms to perform research studies with non-proton nuclei, such as hyperpolarized carbon-13, sodium and deuterium.

I will sign off from my time as guest editor to thank the whole GE Healthcare team in supporting me through this endeavor. I reserve special thanks to Mary Beth Massat for keeping me focused and on time. I am still as excited about MR as the day I first read Ian Pykett’s article on nuclear MR imaging in the May 1982 edition of Scientific American. I hope SIGNA™ Pulse of MR has also helped keep you excited about current developments, as well as the future of MR. Thank you for reading.