King’s College London (UK) has become the first London university to
acquire an inflatable MRI scanner to help children overcome their
anxiety and practice lying still for 30 minutes before they enter a real
MRI scanner.
The custom-made inflatable, designed to look identical to
the 3T Philips scanner used by the Perinatal Imaging team at King’s,
cost £3,000 – a tenth of the cost of the shell of an old MRI scanner
currently used by some organisations to acclimatise children to brain
imaging.
The team are launching a study in January 2015 to explore the
long-term effects of premature birth on the brain. They plan to scan 60
eight-year-old children (30 born prematurely and 30 born at term) to see
if there are any differences in how the brain network develops over
time. Preterm babies are at greater risk of neurodevelopmental problems,
but not much is known about why they develop these impairments or how
we can help them.
The research team in the Division of Imaging Sciences &
Biomedical Engineering at King’s includes PhD student Anita Montagna
(pictured) who is piloting part of the study at the Science Museum’s Live Science experiment.
“Imaging children’s brains can be difficult – some children may feel
nervous in a real scanner, and many also find it difficult to stay still
for long periods. When children move during scanning, this distorts the
images. We hope that letting children play in a mock scanner will make
them more comfortable in a real one” Anita says.
Lead academic Professor David Edwards from King’s College London
says: “The more information we can gather on children’s brains, the
better we can understand how to treat problems with brain development”.