blood?
Magnetic resonance is used on blood samples? Really? What for?
Key Star Trek tri-corder boffinry breakthrough
A breakthrough in small, high-powered magnets could lead to handheld magnetic resonance scanners with similar capabilities to those of today's room-sized medical and scientific instruments. According to a report in MIT Technology Review, Doctor Federico Casanova and colleagues at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule …
This topic is closed for new posts.
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy can be used to analyse all sorts of chemicals. By googling 'nmr blood samples', for instance, I've come across a paper on testing blood plasma to look for cancer.
For more details you'll have to ask someone who hasn't forgotten most of their chemistry degree.
It is used....
to check if a prison guard's blood contains too much iron. Have you never seen X-men? It's how magneto escaped from prison! Magnetically imaging the blood would mean that they can tell if magneto can extract the metal from it to make projectiles, floating platforms and all sorts of metal mayhem.
Another use for NMR
NMR is quite good for spotting benzene in dodgy vodka: the benzene peaks show up a treat as we found when we put an absolute alcohol sample in my university's first NMR machine to look for hydrogen bonds. We were surprised to see them - thought the abs.alc. would have too much water in it - but the mutter of 'No more abs.alc. for me' that ran round the room made us grin[1].
[1] ginger beer spiked with ethanol or abs.alc. was a popular drink among chemistry students when I were one.
Bathtub chemistry
Real chemists use HPLC grade ethanol which has no benzene.
Beer because it's Friday.
in other news
Two scientists who have invented a D-cell sized magnet able to generate 0.7 Tesla have not been able to put it to practical use as of yet, as they are still struggling to pry it off the fridge door.
Yeah, I wondered about that
All very well having a nice portable mega-magnet, but even assuming it doesn't have equally mega- power requirements there's still the fact that you'd be wandering around in public with a bloody strong magnet.
External shielding needed, I guess (ruling out a proper "stand well back and scan" tricorder), unless you want archaeologists braining each other with flying shovels, and bricked hard drives in adjacent offices.
Could be useful
"unless you want archaeologists braining each other with flying shovels, and bricked hard drives in adjacent offices."
Perhaps not archeologists, but you know, there are lots of computers in government buildings. Sadly most politicians have never seen a shovel. ^_^
Keep in mind...
...that the strength of magnetic fields weaken rapidly over distance. they would only have tricoder-shovel problems at very short distances.
But inquisitive minds what to know..
Will it make the tricorder whoohoohooohoohoo noise?
This Ever Changing World In Which We're Livin'
One can only hope said small and powerful magnet is small and powerful enough to fit inside a wristwatch, allowing it to be surreptitiously deployed in the lowering of the zip of a lady's dress behind her back in a hands-free plausibly deniable fashion. Then we will truly be living in the future.
RE: This Ever Changing.....
Harvey,
You and I think alike.
I bet you even know the real reason why a gentlemen always lets a lady go first??
I have heard it put in two different ways,
1) to `check her out from behind`
2) to `check out` her behind
Anyway, who wants to quibble over a word or two.
"why a gentlemen always lets a lady go first"
I always thought it was so she wouldn't complain about him peeing on the toilet seat.
Remember to remove all steel objects...
Generating stonking big magnetic fields is all well and good - so long as you're sure there's nothing made of iron, steel, or (less seriously) nickel hanging around. Otherwise you're in danger emulating "Little book of bunny suicides" rabbit standing in the middle of the road between a knife shop on one side and an electromagnet shop on the other. Piercings would be bad. Hip replacements or pins in bones would be worse.
It's also incompatible with magnetic storage media like PCs, which would probably be inconvenient.
More than just steel...
Quite so, there's a number of reasons MRI units in hospitals have carefully controlled access and patients have to be interviewed before being cleared to enter the magnet. Of greatest concern are things like pacemakers, surgical clips and metal particles in the eye sockets.
Another thing that MRI machines have are large RF shields around them. NMR signals are extremely small and even small amounts of outside RF noise can swamp them. There's also the small matter of a clinical system requiring a three phase electrical supply for the RF and gradient coil amplifiers.
Unfortunate reality nerdery aside, one possibly entertaining side effect would be down to the fact that humans are essentially large bags of conductive liquid. Move a powerful magnet next to a conductor and you get large eddy currents. If that conductor happens to be someone's head, the eddy currents will flow through the brain and induce disorientation, nausea and vertigo. Wave one of these quickly past a patient's head and watch them fall over...
Piercings
Nowr wrong with piercings - I wasn't asked to remove my titanium nipple rings when I last had an MRI!
MRI with piercings
Neither was I, but I took it out anyway - wasn't going to take the chance ;-)
@"500-gramme magnet ... which can generate a 0.7 Tesla field"
Cool I want one! ... only problem is as soon as it gets near (some suitable) metal I doubt I will ever get it off again. (Would be fun to watch the postman struggling to get the box out their van. :)
Question
Would one of these be powerful enough to pull an under wired bra off at a distance?
Just ask'n
It has to be said....
"It's LIFE Jim. But not as we know it."
Good day for units
So the "star trek tricorder" is the new size unit for handheld devices? At a volume of what, half an average bulgarian airbag? I think we should be told.
But Theres already a Tricorder App for that...
http://code.google.com/p/moonblink/wiki/Tricorder
Oh and it doesnt stick to the nearest metal object crushing your hand in the process...
Power requirements?
Let's not celebrate the oncoming portable NMR revolution until we know how much power it takes. Are Docs going to need the physique of a New Zealand prop forward to carry the battery pack?
Come on people, what sort of magnet would The Love Doctor be trying to invent?
"Doctor Federico Casanova" (surely a Simpsons character if ever I heard one) must have invented this by accident during experiments to create a fanny magnet!
Paris, because she is attracted to poles.
Yahbut
You wouldn't want to put sensitive electronics near a 2 Tesla field. You know, like the rest of the Tricorder.
Speakers?
Big bass units? Forget the medical and military applications, stick to the important stuff.
Wow much better motors!
Now I've had some more time to think about it, this breakthrough is going to allow the creation of some insanely powerful electric motors. This work is also going to help all sizes of motors to become more powerful. I can't wait to get lighter more powerful radio controlled model motors and even very powerful tiny servo motors. Then there's bigger applications like more powerful electric cars and even bikes.
I think they are about to become very rich :) … Even just all the improved motor applications for this technology is vast.
Why must I always be the realist? Portable fMRI units for "lie detection"
Let me point out that in the States, fMRI machines are as we speak being certified (how? by what authority?) as lie detection machines for legal investigations. They are labeled 100% reliable. No, you don't get an opinion about it.
Now I see, coming with the speed of a crashing satellite, field fMRI caps to be slapped on the heads of "criminals" for instant lie-detection.
Don't let it happen.
I'll be rich!
Bah, I already have a tri-corder in my Android phone, get with the times! Besides, by far the best use for an ultra-strong magnet would be to finally win on those 2p machines at the seaside. (Non-ferrous? What does that mean? Stop ruining my plans with your stupid science.)
All sorts of problems
As already mentioned:
Destruction of any magnetic data in the vicinity. Not just computers but credit cards, building/travel passes, mobile phones, etc.
Lethal flying objects if there's anything ferromagnetic in the area. They have strict rules to stop people leaving iron objects in scanner rooms, because people have died from a moment's carelessness.
But there's also endless opportunities for sabotage by leaving one of these in just the right place.
And there will of course be lots of '"funny" "practical jokes".
Yeah but...
...what are you going to do when the Gorn feedback your own impulses to build up an overload and the tricorder explodes?
hmm
if you're curious about powerful magnets, neodymium magnets are cheap as anything - I have a pair of 2cm ones (about £10 each when i got them), not sure about measuring the strength, but of the 7-8 people i've showed them to, i'm the only one who can separate them (and then it's the technique I use to orientate them so the field is weaker, then i can just about pull them apart - although if the first attempt doesn't work i need a few minutes before trying again!)
One of my mates made the mistake of allowing his arm to get between them, he dropped one while the other was on the table below - ended up with 2 powerful magnets clamped around his arm, very painful, and not very easy to remove either!
Powerful magnets are cheap, fun, and very very dangerous :)
D Cell
half a kilo the size of D-Cell or a D-cup?
A 500g D cell is dense stuff.
A 500g D cell is dense stuff.
It's all that magnetism pulling them together. Make's 'em small 'n' dense, so it does.
Any stronger and they're in danger of producing neutronium accidentally, or if they let a handful go at once, it's black hole time!
Wheee! What has it got in its pocketses? Oh noes, a pocketful of black hole!
Um, right, I'll get back to the beach, then, shall I?
Units pedant alert
The Tesla is a unit of magnetic flux density, not magnetic "field" or even field strength.
Shame on you El Reg!
I always figured...
...that the Tesla was a unit of nuttiness, with one Tesla being the amount of crazy required to believe that Big Oil is conspiring to silence proofs of free energy devices.
Bah!
I predict a bunch of tricorders stuck immovably to ambulance doors and warships stuck together in rafts by these daft mega-magnets while the terrorists go about non-magnetically in absolute freedom.
Another triumph for "science".
Yeah but...
Will I be able to see through the ladies dresses with it?
Note this is a *permanent* magnet
No power required.
It's *real* feature is it takes standard MRI sample tubes while maintaining a *very* constant magnetic field in the sample zone. good enough to build a "portable" (not sure if this will be laptop or more Osborn luggable for those who remember such things) MRI unit.
Imaging, or samples which don't need insertion are likely to be a *lot* harder.
But still pretty neat.
Hip Replacements
As long as the joint replacement / pins have been in for a bit (about a month) then there's no problem having a scan with them. Apart from your images look crap, and there's always the risk of some heating.
The Article mentions that 0.7T "is still substantially less than the multi-Tesla fields required for MRI scans" - Not true, there are scanners in the sub 1T field (0.5+) that are in use, such as this one http://www.fonar.com/su_specs.htm although the higer Tesla has it's advantages in most cases.
John
BSc(Hons) Diagnostic Radiography
Patents
I'm guessing this is all patented even though it was discussed years ago on usenet forums which is full of prior art. Magnets stronger than what was used in the 1st NMRI machine have been around for years and even old phones have more processing power than was used in the 1st dozen machines.
Halbach array?
I'd guess that the magnet is a cylindrical Halbach array, especially if they're eventually aiming for a 2T field. This would imply that the sample volume is on the order of a couple of mm in diameter. This kinda rules out using the magnet for detecting liquid explosives in sealed containers (though a a larger Halbach array works nicely for that).
Lacking a mention of the homogeneity of the magnet, I'd wonder if the magnet would be capable of high resolution proton NMR, though the high field would be useful for Phosphorus or other biologically significant nuclides. With the small sample volume, the RF power requirements would be pretty modest, so it would be possible to make an easily portable NMR spectrometer using that magnet.
I happened to watch Mystery Men just before meeting Dr. Casanova, so can't help thinking of Casanova Frankenstein when I see his name.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Popular Whitepapers
- The BI Inflexion Point
Information is a right, not a privilege - VPN security - if you want it, come and get it
Attention WiFi hotspotters: You want it - The Register Guide to iSCSI
A primer on Internet SCSI, a protocol to transport SCSI commands over IP - Secure Mobile Working
Beyond the Technology - The Impact of IT Security Attitudes
Putting the pieces in place for effective security delivery - The Register guide to unified communications
A primer on the implications of unified communications for enterprise IT
