Imaging software company BrainSpec has signed a license agreement with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR) to commercialise a tool for simplifying magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS).
MRS measures the chemical composition of brain tissue. While traditional MRI shows the structure of the brain, MRS provides information about the brain’s biochemistry. The challenge around MRS is that for certain studies, users must select a specific region of the brain for data collection. Historically this has meant that the imaging modality is perceived as too challenging, making some researchers “too afraid to even try” using it, according to BrainSpec’s CEO and co-founder Alex Zimmerman.
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“I saw spectroscopy as having immense clinical promise and potential, but translating it has traditionally been challenging if there isn’t a scientist or an imaging lab to interpret it. Our goal was to make this type of technology easier to use,” Zimmerman told Medical Device Network.
To solve the challenges around using MRS, BrainSpec partnered with the Spectroscopy Division at CMRR, which has developed Auto volume of interest (AutoVOI), a tool designed to automate the selection of brain regions for MRS.
“I’m a chemist and physicist by training, so I was naturally inclined to study neurochemistry in neurodegenerative diseases, and my group has put a lot of work into making these methods simpler for the MR technologist to apply, to simplify the data collection, for example, and that’s where our interests came together and overlapped,” Dr. Gülin Öz, director of the Spectroscopy Division of the CMRR told Medical Device Network.
According to Dr. Öz, AutoVOI can be thought of as “GPS for spectroscopic imaging”.
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By GlobalData“You don’t need to rely on the expertise of the individual who is collecting the spectroscopy data to place the volume of interest on the brain images, but based on anatomical landmarks,” Öz explained.
“AutoVOI does the placement for you, reproducibly, to increase the reliability and consistency of the data so that it’s interpretable between patients or healthy brains.”
“The approach is to make the mapping process easier, and therefore the overall MRS process, easier,” Zimmerman added.
To date, AutoVOI has been used in a number of multi-site trial readiness study settings. Combined with BrainSpec’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered MRS platform, which gained US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance in 2023, BrainSpec hopes to translate the research ‘into product’ over time.
“Our overall plan to provide a solution that enables any imaging centre to readily use MRS to acquire high-quality data that may ultimately lead to better decisions and patient outcomes,” Zimmerman concluded.
