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Conformal Voxel Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Summary
The past five years has seen an explosion in the number of clinical institutions using in vivo magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) for the identification and grading of brain tumours, white matter disease, degenerative disease, prostate cancer, and many other pathologies. Working off an MRI image, spectroscopists can now select a cube-shaped area (called a voxel) inside the tissue of interest and acquire an MR spectrum from just that area.
The method, however, is not without shortcomings. Tumours, for example, do not grow in the shape of a cuboid. Therefore when defining the area to examine, the spectroscopist must currently make the choice of either excluding pieces of a tumour by placing the voxel inside the tumour, or including normal tissue outside by defining a voxel that encompasses the tumour. Neither choice is ideal, possibly leading to a spectrum that is not representative of the tumour.
Conformal Voxel MRS (CV-MRS) solves these problems by changing the way a voxel is prescribed. Developed by researchers at NRC's Institute for Biodiagnostics (NRC-IBD), CV-MRS is not limited to cuboidal voxels; instead it uses a computer algorithm to optimally sculpt a voxel using many sharp spatial saturation slices to conform to the natural shape of the tumour, prostate, or other tissue of interest. In its simplest implementation, a technologist would simply click on the tissue of interest and the computer would do the rest. Therefore, in addition to optimizing the spectrum obtained, CV-MRS essentially removes operator-to-operator differences by removing the subjective decisions.
Advantages
- Automatic voxel definition maximizes volume of interest while minimizing volume of exclusion
- Non-subjective voxel definition removes operator-to-operator differences
- User friendly
Opportunity
The technology is available for exclusive or non-exclusive license.
