Intermagnetics General Corporation (Nasdaq: IMGC) subsidiary, Invivo Corporation, has been awarded a $500,000 Department of Defense grant to develop an integrated hardware and software system that will enable high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of traumatic brain injuries and promote substantially more effective diagnosis and treatment in many difficult cases. Invivo is partnering with the Office of Naval Research on the project.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) is scheduled to formally announce the award during an appearance at Invivo’s Gainesville, Florida facility today at 9:00 AM EDT.
“Brain injury is the second leading cause of battlefield deaths, and this grant is intended to provide a means of diagnosis and treatment that, in many cases, is not totally reliable under current procedures,” Stearns said. “We owe it to our wounded military personnel returning from combat duty to have the best possible care available.”
Tom Schubert, chief technology officer of Invivo, added: “We believe Invivo’s advanced MRI radio frequency coils, which enable highly detailed organ-specific imaging, combined with modifications to our innovative DynaCad computer-aided diagnostic system will provide the solution the military is seeking.
“Currently,” Schubert added, “computed tomography (CT) is the main radiological tool for diagnosing traumatic brain injury patients. Yet every radiologist is aware that CT’s effectiveness in assessing brain trauma is limited to visualizing fractures and significant hematomas but is ineffective in diagnosing more subtle injuries.
“For example, CT does not provide the fine soft tissue discrimination required to localize and investigate small white matter lesions, such as the shear lesions and micro-bleedings that are common in traumatic or concussive brain injury. Nor can CT be used in the investigation of subarachnoidal hemorrhage. Subarachnoidal hemorrhages must be fully investigated in a very timely fashion, or they may lead to extremely dangerous secondary strokes.”
Schubert noted that the Invivo solution would be used in the highest-field MRI systems available, such as those powered by Intermagnetics’ 3.0 Tesla magnets. Invivo, working with the Office of Naval Research, expects to deliver evaluation models of both the advanced imaging hardware and the analysis software this year. Naval neurologists, neurosurgeons, and traumatic brain injury specialists will conduct scientific and clinical evaluation of the prototypes.
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