Question: Why do MRI machines need software writing out?

Joshua McAteer answered on 13 Nov 2020: last edited 13 Nov 2020 2:31 pm

I wasn’t completely sure exactly what you meant in your question. I hope that this answers it at least in part. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask

The short answer: MRI machines transmit and receive complicated radio wave signals into your body. Computers are needed to work out what kind of signal to transmit and how to produce an image from the signal that is received. The software which the computers run has the specific instructions which are needed to do this. The software is also a user interface and a database.

The longer version:

So MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields and radiowaves which interact with the nuclei of atoms in your body. You need to transmit very specific radiofrequency signals and then measure the signal after it has passed through the body. The atoms in your body are jiggled about by the radiowaves and then emit more radio waves which are very slightly different from the transmitted signal. The differences in the transmitted and received signal contains information about your body.

This whole process is controlled by computers as the radio wave signals which you need to transmit depend on the specific settings of the MRI scan, such as the resolution, size, and orientation of the image which needs to be made. The signal which is received during the scan can’t immediately be viewed as an image. It is a wiggly voltage which is converted into a wiggly string of numbers. The string of numbers, which represents the radio waves that were received from the body during the scan, then needs to go through a complicated mathematical operation which then produces the image.

All of these processes are done by a computer and the computer knows what to do because software was written for it which gives it specific instructions on how to handle the data.

If you have an MRI scan in a hospital the scanner already has all of this software written, and it is tested carefully to make sure it is safe and produces images that are useful to doctors. The companies which make MRI scanners employ scientists and engineers to write this software.

I work at a University that has MRI scanners. We try to improve how they work and get new kinds of information out of them that might be useful for doctors. What I do, is write new software that reconstructs the data in a more complicated way. Hopefully, this will allow MRI scans to be acquired faster and with better image quality.