EPI in the mix

Anna Falk Delgado, MD, PhD, specialist physician at Karolinska University Hospital, Tim Sprenger, PhD, Clinical Scientist, GE Global Research and Stefan Skare, PhD, Associate Professor and MR physicist at Karolinska Institutet, received the 2018 Athena Prize for shortening the time for an MR exam from one half hour to one minute. Their work focused on developing software that controls the MR system so it could produce images in less time, but still ensure the images contained enough information for diagnoses. Typically between five and 10 different types of MR sequences are needed for an MR exam, and each imaging series may take up to seven minutes. Skare however, noted that the EPI imaging method is around 100 times faster than other MR imaging methods. Skare asked himself, what if you used the quick method to take all types of MR images? This led Skare’s team to develop a method called EPI Mix that allows all images to be captured in 70 seconds instead of 20-30 minutes. The group is now planning further studies to compare conventional MR imaging and EPI mix.