(Duke University School of Medicine) – Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a gold standard tool for capturing crisp, detailed pictures without radiation, to diagnose serious conditions like cancer and epilepsy.
But to Dan Ma, PhD, associate professor of neurosurgery and associate professor in biomedical engineering, it’s still too imprecise.
She compares it to checking for a fever by touching someone’s forehead: useful, but subjective. “When radiologists read clinical MRI images, they will say a lesion is brighter or darker compared to another area,” Ma said. “It’s a very qualitative evaluation. It’s not giving you an absolute value measuring tissue property.” CONTINUE