Interactive, real-time magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) can now be done on the World Wide Web with
NWebScope--state-of-the-art instrumentation developed
at UIUC. With universally available browser software,
researchers anywhere can conduct experiments from
their desktop or laptop computers.
The interactive MRI system--known as NmrScope--is available on the Web through NWebScope. NmrScope provides simple on-screen instructions that allow remote users to review and modify experimental conditions for observations of objects in an MRI system. The resulting images are displayed on-screen as soon as they are produced.
Scientists Carl Gregory and Clint Potter of the UI College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign and NCSA, working at the UIUC Beckman Institute with funding from the Division of Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health, have linked standard commercial MRI system components (manufactured by Surrey Medical Imaging Systems and Magnex Scientific) with an IBM RS/6000 workstation and software produced at the university to create NWebScope.
An authorized researcher, who must first arrange for a sample to be delivered to the university or provided to the university by a nearby collaborator for analysis, can connect to the server by entering its URL in a Web browser. The experimenter then sees a form showing the instrument settings and a menu of possible functions, such as move slice forward, zoom in, zoom out, and so on. After choosing the desired conditions, the researcher clicks a screen button and the experiment is carried out. A resulting image is returned to the screen, allowing immediate decisions on the next steps to be taken, including downloading the image for later analysis.
Instead of having to purchase expensive state-of-the-art MRI systems, researchers can use inexpensive browsing software, such as NCSA Mosaic or Netscape Navigator, and pay only the usual usage fee on the MRI system. Additional details can be obtained from the Beckman Magnetic Resonance Laboratory (BMRL) Web site.
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NCSA: The National Center for Supercomputing
Applications
access / Summer 1996
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