14 replies to this topic

[lucid]

Yes you read right, 100 Million X more volume resolution. Sweet jesus.

[eternaltraveler]

this is just the kind of scanning breakthrough we need in order to have a chance of uploading before our creations become gods unto themselves.

[eternaltraveler]

course this tech would still require them to cut up your brain into 100 million peices small enough to be scanned. But hey, it's a start.

[Mind]

"MRI is well known as a powerful tool for medical imaging, but its capability for microscopy has always been very limited," said Dan Rugar, manager of nanoscale studies at IBM.

Unlike conventional MRI machines, which use imaging and gradient coils to scan the body, IBM's device detects minute magnetic forces while the sample rests on a microscopic cantilever -- a small sliver of silicon that's shaped like a diving board.

Magnetic spins in the sample's hydrogen atoms interact with a nanoscopic magnetic tip, causing vibrations in the cantilever that are tracked by laser interferometry. "Our hope is that nano MRI will eventually allow us to directly image the internal structure of individual protein molecules and molecular complexes," said Rugar.

In the lab, IBM applied the technique to a sample of tobacco mosaic virus and achieved resolution down to four nanometers, the company said. IBM published the results Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

link

[bgwowk]

I don't know what the fuss is about. This is Magnetic Force Microscopy, which is just another flavor of scanning probe microscopy. In other words, it's a way of "feeling" atoms on a surface that is poked with a sharp needle. It's been around for many years.

[Tom 2009]

Maybe you will be interesting about this -


http://techfragments...Resolution.html


http://news.bbc.co.u...ech/7826901.stm


http://www.informati...cleID=212900162


Looks like Ray kurzweil knows what he is talking about.

[JohnDoe1234]

Impressive, thanks for the link Tom!

100 Million times greater? That is so incredible it's hard to believe!

[Tom 2009]

Actually? this rate of MRI resolution growing looks to me much faster than the rate that Ray kurzweil was talking about in his book....

Am I wrong about this?

Thanks! :-)

[forever freedom]

Actually? this rate of MRI resolution growing looks to me much faster than the rate that Ray kurzweil was talking about in his book....

Am I wrong about this?

Thanks! :-)

This doesn't have much to do with the exponential rate at which information-based technologies advance (many of them doubling every year or two). This is a specific advance, don't expect IBM to make a resolution increase on the MRI of 100 million next year . This is, though, a consequence of the exponential rate at which information based technologies are advancing.



Could this super duper improved MRI version be used to scan the brain in a level of detail never seen before? If we managed to do that, my god we would be so much closer to being able to reverse engineer it and eventually simulate it. This breakthrough looks really promising. I wasn't really believing in Kurzweil's date for 2045 as the singularity (i thought more like around 2060) but now depending on further developments of this and its ramifications (whether we can scan the brain with it) i must say i'm getting much more optimistic.

[MichaelGR]

http://www-03.ibm.co...lease/26453.wss

http://www.technolog...medicine/21950/


Very promising for many things, including bio-sciences.

[niner]

I don't know what the fuss is about. This is Magnetic Force Microscopy, which is just another flavor of scanning probe microscopy. In other words, it's a way of "feeling" atoms on a surface that is poked with a sharp needle. It's been around for many years.

I don't know what the fuss is about either. The only reason that the PR people have generated so many orders of magnitude is from comparing it to something that is completely different. It's not an MRI in the sense that people normally think of them. If it's ultimately to be useful as a tool for determination of macromolecular structure, then it needs about 20 times better resolution still.

[niner]

Although this animation is a little crude and has no sound, it might make more sense.

[bgwowk]

Actually? this rate of MRI resolution growing looks to me much faster than the rate that Ray kurzweil was talking about in his book....

Am I wrong about this?

Yes, you are wrong. Imagine that the invention of the microscope was announced as "a new kind of telescope that can see details 100 million times smaller than previous telescopes!" Now imagine that this new and improved "telescope" (when it's not really a telescope) was actually invented years earlier. That's what you have here. If people upon hearing about the allegedly new kind of telescope (which was actually a microscope) then wondered if soon they would be able to see the surface of the moon with 10 micrometer resolution by just looking at it from Earth with the new instrument, that would also be what you have here.

In summary, these news stories are being grossly misunderstood.

[eternaltraveler]

bummer

guess i should have read more than the title.

[Mind]

Thanks for the analogy Dr. Wowk. Nice to have a physicist or two around.