Medical Vision Group

Scientists employ an underused resource — radiology reports that accompany medical images — to improve the interpretive abilities of machine learning algorithms.

Dr. Polina Golland to be inducted into medical and biological engineering elite

Many health issues are tied to excess fluid in the lungs. A new algorithm can detect the severity by looking at a single X-ray.

New technique stretches out MRI scans of placentas so they can be more accurately analyzed, and shows the potential of MRI for pregnancy monitoring.

People who suffer a stroke often undergo a brain scan at the hospital, allowing doctors to determine the location and extent of the damage. Researchers who study the effects of strokes would love to be able to analyze these images, but the resolution is often too low for many analyses.

Researchers from MIT, Boston Children's Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital have joined forces in an ambitious new project to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to evaluate the health of fetuses.

Typically, fetal development is monitored with ultrasound imaging, which is cheap and portable and can gauge blood flow through the placenta, the organ in the uterus that delivers nutrients to the fetus. But MRI could potentially measure the concentration of different chemicals in the placenta and in fetal organs, which may have more diagnostic value.

Researchers at CSAIL and Boston Children’s Hospital have developed a system that can take MRI scans of a patient’s heart and, in a matter of hours, convert them into a tangible, physical model that surgeons can use to plan surgery.The models could provide a more intuitive way for surgeons to assess and prepare for the anatomical idiosyncrasies of individual patients. “Our collaborators are convinced that this will make a difference,” says professor and CSAIL principal investigator Polina Golland, who led the project. “The phrase I heard is that ‘surgeons see with their hands,’ that the perception is in the touch.” This fall, seven cardiac surgeons at Boston Children’s Hospital will participate in a study intended to evaluate the models’ usefulness.