2024-04-02 14:45:14
The Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission unveiled this Tuesday, April 2, the first images from the Iseult MRI. Much more powerful than a traditional MRI, it should provide a better understanding of how the brain functions.
Emmanuel Macron hails “French pride”. The “most powerful MRI in the world” delivered its first images of the human brain near Paris, as announced by the CEA Paris-Saclay, a research center, this Tuesday April 2.
Named “Iseult”, the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging device) is the star of Neurospin, the CEA brain imaging research center, headed by neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene. It should provide a better understanding of the functioning of the brain and certain neurodegenerative or psychiatric diseases.
In 2021, researchers from the CEA (Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission), located on the Saclay plateau (Essonne), chose to release the machine with a pumpkin, before the health authorities recently gave their green light for the examination of human subjects.
Over the past few months, around twenty healthy volunteers have been able to enter the machine’s lair, which revealed the first images of their brain. “We had to prove to the health authorities that such an intensity of magnetic field has no effect on health,” explains to Le Monde Nicolas Boulant, research director at the CEA and scientific manager of the project.
“A level of finesse never before achieved”
“We have a level of finesse never before reached at the CEA,” says Alexandre Vignaud, physicist and research director at the CEA. The magnetic field of this extraordinary magnet reaches 11.7 T (tesla), making it possible to obtain images 10 times more precise than those currently produced in hospitals, where the power of MRIs does not exceed 3 tesla.
All in just four minutes, with a result for which a hospital MRI would take “theoretically several hours”, “unrealistic for the patient’s comfort and because their movements would ‘blur’ the image”, as the CEA explains in a press release.
“With this machine, we can see the very small vessels which supply the cerebral cortex or details of the cerebellum which were almost invisible until now,” emphasizes Alexandre Vignaud.
“This is a major breakthrough and immense hope for the study of our health,” President Emmanuel Macron also reacted on X (ex-Twitter). The Minister of Research, Sylvie Retailleau, highlighted “a technological revolution which opens up unprecedented perspectives for our health”.
More than 20 years of research
The machine, a 132-ton magnet housed in a cylinder 5 meters long and as high, composed of a coil carrying a current of 1,500 amps, has an opening of 90 cm to accommodate a human body. This technical feat, the result of a Franco-German partnership, required more than 20 years of research.
Two competing projects, in the United States and South Korea, have similar ambitions but have not yet reached the crucial stage of imaging on humans. One of the objectives of this extraordinary MRI is to refine the understanding of the anatomy of the brain and the areas which are activated when carrying out certain tasks.
A volunteer examined by the Iseult MRI at the CEA in Gif-sur-Yvette, in Essonne, March 22, 2024 © ALAIN JOCARD / AFP
Scientists already know that different types of images that we are capable of recognizing (a face, a place, a word, etc.) activate distinct regions of the cerebral cortex. With MRI at 11.7 T, “we will be able to better understand the relationship between structure and cognitive functions of the brain, when we read a book or do a mental calculation for example,” assures Nicolas Boulant.
Studying neurodegenerative diseases
But it will also be a question of elucidating the mechanisms at work in neurodegenerative diseases (Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s type) or in psychiatric conditions (depression, bipolarity, schizophrenia, etc.).
“We know, for example, that a particular area – the hippocampus – is involved in Alzheimer’s disease, so we hope to be able to understand the organization and functioning of the cells in this part of the cerebral cortex”, illustrates Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, director of fundamental research at the CEA.
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Researchers also hope to be able to map the distribution of certain drugs, such as lithium, used in the treatment of bipolar disorder. The very high magnetic field of the machine will indeed make it possible to identify the brain structures targeted by lithium in patients and to distinguish more or less good responders to treatment.
“If we better understand these very impactful diseases, we should be able to make an earlier diagnosis, and therefore treat them better,” says Anne-Isabelle Etienvre. Iseult will remain dedicated to fundamental research for a number of years.
“The device is not intended to become a clinical diagnostic tool but we hope that the knowledge acquired can then be used in hospitals,” underlines Nicolas Boulant. New healthy volunteers should be recruited by the end of summer. The brains of sick patients will not be studied for a few more years.
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