Here is one more example of how technology can help us, in this case thanks to an ingenious medical application. Anyone who has had to have an MRI knows that the experience is usually not very pleasant and that it can be a bit claustrophobic. Well, that has been taken into account by the researchers at King’s College London, who have created an interactive Virtual Reality system that can be used by patients during an MRI.
In an article published in Scientific Reports , the researchers say they hope this breakthrough will make life easier for those who find it difficult to undergo an MRI, such as children, those with cognitive difficulties or, of course, those who suffer from claustrophobia and anxiety.
Under normal circumstances, MRIs fail fifty percent of the time in children under the age of five, meaning hospitals have to resort to sedation or even anesthesia for them to be successfully scanned. However, such measures are time consuming, expensive and risky. From a neuroscientific point of view, that also means that brain studies done on this vulnerable part of the population are done during a state of induced sleep, so the results may not be representative of how the brain works in real life. normal circumstances.
Chief Investigator Dr Kun Qian , King’s School of Biomedical Engineering College London, reminds that undergoing an MRI can be a bit of a strange experience, as it involves crawling into a narrow tunnel, often with strange, loud sounds in the background, while keeping as still as possible.
“We wanted to find other ways to allow children and vulnerable people to have an MRI,” says Dr. Qian . “Our specific interest in Virtual Reality came from the observation that when you are immersed in a Virtual Reality environment you are not aware of your surroundings. We thought that if we could make a system compatible with MRI it could be a powerful alternative way to successfully perform scans on that part of the population.”
That’s how they came up with Virtual Reality headsets that can be safely inserted into an MRI scanner.
