French researchers have developed an MRI technique that could lead to the early detection of brain tumors by monitoring the motion of living tissue caused by cardiac motion, blood pulsatility, and muscle activity.
Details were published online on 5 October in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Inserm researchers using computational techniques borrowed from seismology, which they called noise correlation, to build images of the brain's elasticity.
The study's authors speculate the MRI technique, which simulates a palpitation of the brain, could have other applications, such as analyzing the development of neurodegenerative processes, the impact of a lesion from a trauma or tumor, or response to treatment.
