Holographic Visualization of Magnetization Dynamics for Improved Magnetic Resonance Imaging Education

Holographic Visualization of Magnetization Dynamics for Improved Magnetic Resonance Imaging Education

Academic Year:
2019 - 2020 (June 1, 2019 through May 31, 2020)
Funding Requested:
$6,000.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
Overview of the Project:
In this project, flexible augmented reality holographic displays will be created as visual aids for teaching the basic concepts of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). MRI is one of the most important and widely used medical imaging modalities, but also complex and thus challenging for students to understand. Undergraduates and graduate students in Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Physics, as well as medical students and residents, often struggle to truly understand the connection between the MRI scanner settings, the nuclear magnetic moment (which is the source of the MRI signal), and image contrast. Educators attempt to depict the complex motion of the magnetic moment using 2D figures or 3D movies, but these conventional approaches are insufficient and often give the impression that MRI is much more complicated than it really is. Novel holographic visualization apps, using hardware such as Microsoft HoloLens, provide a unique opportunity to help students learn this complex material. Interactive holographic visual aids will be developed in-house at the Duderstadt Center specifically for MRI education. These new tools will be accompanied by lecture materials such that the complete package can be disseminated to any faculty member wishing to teach MRI, including specialized holographic visualization modules for undergraduate and graduate students (BME 499.006 and BME/EECS 516) as well as radiology residents. The success of the project will be evaluated via surveys and improvement in student test scores. The team members involved in this project are enthusiastic and have the expertise and access to students to facilitate this work.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

In this project, our plan was to create flexible augmented reality holographic displays to be used as visual aids for teaching the basic concepts of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). These visual aids were to be accompanied by lecture materials for set demonstrations such that the package can be disseminated to any faculty member wishing to teach MRI. Note that this mini-module will be deployable in any course in which MRI is covered, but will be particularly geared towards undergraduate and graduate students as well as radiology residents, and accompanying material specifically for these students will be developed alongside this visual aid. 

This project ran into unanticipated difficulties due to insufficient capacity at Duderstadt (due to COVID restrictions and increased pressure for virtual solutions), and thus we were unable to implement our visual aids as holographic demos.  However, we instead developed video renderings of various MRI sequences which were deployed as intended in graduate and resident education programs. 

Project Achievements:
  • Development of a visualization platform for MRI spin dynamics for teaching purposes as 3D videos
  • Rendering of more than 10 common MRI sequences and integration of these renderings in lectures along with representative MR images
  • Delivery of lectures with these new MRI sequence demos to graduate students and residents
  • After polling of students, these demos were found to assist with their understanding of MRI 
  • Development of an extraction format for these video demos to be transferred for later Hololens visualization
Continuation:
Yes, this project will continue beyond the grant period. The MRI spin dynamics demos have been incorporated into lectures for radiology residents which will be offered every summer as well as lectures for graduate students that are offered in the fall; as in person learning returns, I hope to bring these demos and lectures to classes in BME and EE as well. Because we were unable to implement these demos as holograms, we have not yet fully realized the objectives of this project. However, all of our video demos have been saved in a format which will easily enable integration into a holographic visualization system once we find an appropriate partner with expertise in Unity coding (or other holographic implementation software).
Dissemination:
All of the demos are available to MRI researchers in radiology who teach MRI physics and can be transferred to others in engineering upon request.
Advice to your Colleagues:
This project was greatly impacted by COVID--capacity challenges lead us to modify our original objectives to enable us to complete this project. However, our group decided to move forward with the components that we were able to accomplish, which were highly valuable to our learners despite the different format (i.e. video demos of MRI spin dynamics instead of holographic visualizations). We learned that providing a partial solution in challenging times is preferable to no solution at all, and were gratified to see that these partial solutions were met with enthusiasm. We will continue to work towards full completion of our objectives (holographic implementation) beyond the timeframe of this project.