MRI Post-Processing Platform Visualizes Entire Brain in Minutes

A new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) software platform enables comprehensive, quantitative brain imaging with enhanced visualization in significantly less time than conventional approaches.

The SpinTech (Holland, MI, USA) STAGE platform is a powerful, rapid, multi-contrast imaging method that allows scanning the entire brain in roughly five minutes. STAGE allows acquisition of 16 brain imaging contrasts, including maps of Tl, R2*, and proton density (PD), enhanced Tl weighted images, susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) images, susceptibility weighted image map (SWIM) images, pseudo-SWIM (pSWIM) images, modified pSWIM (mpSWIM) images, true SWI (tSWI) images, MR angiography images, simulated dual-inversion recovery (DIR) images.

The STAGE system consists of a dedicated computer connected to the user’s local area network. The computer receives DICOM data from a MRI scan using a specific 3D GRE scan protocol (the STAGE protocol), and outputs in return numerous DICOM datasets with different types of contrast to the picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) server. STAGE is compatible with both 1.5T and 3T systems across manufacturers, and provides standardized outputs that can enable more reliable longitudinal comparison across different MRI machines.

“STAGE's novel acquisition technique and post-processing software, which grew from the world's top MRI research groups, is designed to enhance visualization of biomarkers that couldn't be seen in the brain before while improving throughput and accuracy, making it a significant advancement in imaging,” said Ward Detweiler, President and CEO of SpinTech. “We are incredibly excited to make this game-changing technology available for clinical use in hospitals and imaging centers.”

“Radiologists have long struggled to obtain comprehensive, high-quality clinical data within very constricted scanning windows,” said Mark Haacke, PhD, founder and CSO of SpinTech. “Now, they don't need to choose which sequences to run, just what they are going to examine, as all the data they need has already been collected. On top of the enhanced imaging data, radiology groups will also benefit from increased patient throughput. And, of course, patients experience shorter scan times, so everybody wins.”

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