'Viral porn': Atomic-scale MRI can film viruses in HD

Talk about "viral porn"—but it might not be exactly what you're thinking. Doctors are looking to expose the secret lives of viruses, thanks to stunning new HD technologies.

Medical technicians will soon be able to capture extremely small biological samples like viruses in high definition, with new advances in nanoscale resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The University of Illinois College of Engineering said it is working on an MRI technique that promises a spatial resolution of 10 nanometers.

"This is a very promising experimental result. Our approach brings MRI one step closer in its eventual progress toward atomic-scale imaging," said university physicist and research leader Raffi Budakian.

"We expect this new technique to become a paradigm for nanoscale magnetic-resonance imaging and spectroscopy into the future," added Budakian.

Budakian also said this is "compatible with and can be incorporated into existing conventional MRI technologies."

MRI is a noninvasive and harmless method widely used in clinical practice to distinguish pathologic tissue from normal tissue.

It uses strong magnetic fields and non-ionizing electromagnetic fields in the radio frequency range, in contrast to CT scans and X-rays, which use potentially harmful ionizing radiation.
    
According to the university, present MRI techniques in medical imaging yield spatial resolutions on the millimeter length scale.

The highest-resolution experimental instruments at present give a spatial resolution of a few micrometers, it added.

"Increasing the detection resolution from the millimeter to nanometer range would be a technological dream come true," it said.

Breakthrough

The university team's new technique uses two components to overcome allow pulsed magnetic resonance techniques in nanoscale systems.

It used periodic radio-frequency magnetic field pulses to "encode temporal correlations in the statistical polarization of nuclear spins in the sample."

A nanoscale metal constriction then focuses current, generating intense magnetic field-pulses.

Demo

To demonstrate their work, the team used an ultrasensitive magnetic resonance sensor based on a silicon nanowire oscillator to reconstruct a 2D projection image of the proton density in a polystyrene sample at nanoscale spatial resolution.

Next hurdle

A report on tech site CNET quoted Budakian as saying one of the next hurdles is to handle nanometer-scale biological samples at low temperatures.

"It's a low-temperature environment; we have to cool things down to cryogenic temperatures. And there is a way to prep biological materials to survive that, but it's by no means trivial and is something we'll have to think about moving forward. It's by no means guaranteed that the image will be at all relevant to what's going on inside someone's body," he said.

But he added that with funding that can back future advances, they may produce spatial resolutions between one and three nanometers in the next few years. — TJD, GMA News