Group Home
Lei Zhou
Post Doctoral Researcher
Biomedical Imaging Technology Center		  
Office:
531 Asbury Circle
Suite 531
Atlanta, GA 30322-4600
Tel:404.712.2696(shared with others)
Fax:404.712.2707(whole office)
mailto:lzhou5@emory.edu
 Mail:
Woodruff Memorial Building
1639 Pierce Drive, Suite 2001
Atlanta, GA 30322-4600

Maxims:

1. The principle(or say, the universe, the God) does everything for nothing.
道 常 无 为 而 无 不 为。
2. One will only be great if he never struggles for being great.
以 其 终 不 自 为 大 ， 故 能 成 其 大。
3. The spirit (or say idea) may be accepted over the world without the body's travelling around.
足 不 出 户 而 道 行 于 千 里 之 外。

 
Wisdom is born on a planet. However, wisdom will finally take a born from the womb of the mother planet, and sets steps into the universe. So do we human being on the earth. And this will happen within several hundred years.
MRI is a method of non-destructive internal detection of living things. However, there are a couple of technological inconvenience that restricted it as a kind of expensive diagnostic/research tool.
  1. The requirement of very uniform main magnetic field was solved by huge main magnet, usually superconducting magnets that are cooled by liquid helium, a very expensive non-recoverable rare resource on the earth.
  2. The medium used for detection is light (electro-magnetic wave) with the wavelenght greater than the interested subjects. For this reason, all collectable time zone signals reflect a sort of integration of the reaction of all nuclei in, and even out of the region of interest (ROI). And the image is actually obtained by encoding the time zone signal series so that they could be reverted into space plot by a mathematical tool called Fourier Transformation.
  3. The signal is so weak, weaker than the normal radio frequency background from broadcasting and other human activities, that the system has to be enclosed in a particularly designed RF shielded room.
  4. The paradox among resolution/uniformity/field of view has never been actually solved because the phase array could not act as a real phase array due to coupling.
  5. And, the safe RF power threshold stops using higher RF power for achieveing higher resoution

I expect that the above issues would have some solution in the near future.
  1. Issue one: Huge and expensive B0 magnet
    Magnetic field is a vector field and can be added over. So, probably it is possible to use a permanent magnet structure as a background, and the B0 coil will only need to provide limited additional field. Also, high temperaure superconducting magnet someday may be realistic. This may greatly reduce the complexity of cryostat and cooling cost.
  2. Issue two and four: encoding-decoding issue:
    Near placed or overlapped receiver coils does couple with each other strongly. However, have somebody tried micro-coil array? I mean, coils with the size of 1 centimeter or smaller. They are overlapped arranged like a chain mail, and grouped into 4 or more so that numbers in each group won't couple critically. Then each group will act as a real phase array, and by the mean of digital data processing, better reasolution might be obtained.
  3. Issue three: weak signal issue
    It might be always cheaper of building a shielding house for a MRI machine. However, what if an MRI system is demanded for emergency field diagnosis or similar? Noting that the wavelength of the resonance frequency is still larger than most ROI of MRI subject, it might be possible to collect the background noise with a coil outside the machine, and take it out from the coil coupling with the subject.
  4. Issue five: RF power threshold - This have no solution. Never challenge it.


fMRI - functional magnetic resonance imaging - is supposed to be able to detect the change of proton density, or the blood flow rate, or oxygen density, etc. at the interested area in the brain cause by controlled activity of the subject. For example, the brain map at different time after giving the subject a dose of particular drug. The difference is supposed statistically caused by the drug. There could be many interesting topics that may be benefitted by fMRI method. The following is a list:
  1. Most exciting:
    1. Make Chinese medicine a science!
      This is the most marvelous idea I have ever got. Chinese medicine is a system based on "jingluo" - main and collateral channels - which are not shown on the bias of anatomy. Thus its theory does not have scientific support. But it does work! Even for those who did not believe Chinese medicine at the beginning. This means that Chinese medicine should be a branch of science. Then how does it work? By my understanding and practical experience, I believe that most of therapeutics of Chinese medicine works on the neural system and lymphatic circle, besides obvious reaction on blood circle. And all of these could fall into the capability of extended fMRI, not only brain, but body. Suppose a patient who has some long term problem, and did an MRI, then was treated by a kind of Chinese therapy, then he claimed feeling much better, then did another MRI, we may be able to identify some systematical difference after examined a considerable amont of subjects. This need the cooperation of a trustful Chinese doctor, and time and money.
  2. Animal related:
    1. Interactive brain probe (very cruel idea!)
      This is supposed to work on animals. To implant probes that can discharge charges or drugs directly on the brain. And practise it particular tasks. Huh...
    2. Trained and Amateur
      The reflex of a trained person is always much faster and more accurate than an amateur. According to the theory of neural network, the train is supposed to form and enforce encouraged connection network in the human neural system. The existing capability of mapping the connections between human thalamus and cortex using diffusion imaging may be too coarse for mapping detailed trainning behavior in the brain, however, it may be good enough to discover the difference between the trained animal and untrained twins.
      For human, game play is a practical idea. Such as a game rod controlled pilot game, one is supposed to drive his "airplane" to follow its enemy. Amateur and trained player can be tested.
    3. Conditioned reflex on animal
      Monkey was trained of some conditioned reflex. Do fMRI on it with the condition applied. For example, electric shock while showing red color. Another untrained monkey was tested with the actual attraction applied (the shock).
      Any difference?
    4. Learning mode - encouragement and punishment. on Monkey
      There are two ways to make an animal learn human skills. They were shown what's expected. One is by encouragement, when it did things as expected, they were treated by food. One is by punishment, when it did things wrong, they were lashed. And same training result will be achieved. Then what's the difference on brain activity of the two model of conditioned reflex?
    5. Training effect on monkey - culture effect.
      Twin monkeys were separated when born. One is nursed by its mom in a wild park. One is fully nursed and trained to conmmunicate with human via computer. But they are guided to like same food, like banana, etc. Then they were researched for brain connectivity when fully grown. What's the difference?
  3. Clinical Research
    1. Recovery research.
      This is another marvelous idea. It is always a miracle for me, maybe for many MDs, that how a cut get recovered. It might have been already clear that how a cut get recovered before it can accidently burst apart again. However, what happened thereafter? Many patients after surgery claimed that their cut itching and feeling uncomfortable even years after the operation. Local high resolution MRI might be possible to find out what is happening there in a long term. And this might lead to the discovery of no-scar recovery and even better results.
    2. Non-pathological uncomfortable:
      This is something hard to find proper subjects. Actually millions of people visit their doctors for obvious uncomfortable. However, the doctor could never find out what's wrong in them. Those things might be self-cured after days, or remain forever. Supposed a sort of people are called in for a brain scan, and another after their self-cure, something might be detectable in the brain. Also, the work of some medication may be researched based on this.
    3. Normal neural pathway:
      Many patients suffer of short term or long term disablity after a tiny accident. If MRI can actually monitor the neural pathway between the brain and the arm/leg, we may be able to figure out what's wrong at where.
    4. Brain damage research
      This is observation only. When people get old, they may experience the decay of brain, and the is supposed monitorable by MRI. By giving a discount to the patient, he might agree to participate with the research. So that we will have a chart of brain connectivity decay with the lost of function until his die. I do not know what's the importance of knowing this, but may be worth of just collecting knowledge.
      An opposite idea is to detect the kids with birth defect caused low mentality about the brain connectivity. Is it a structural problem or fuctional problem that they cannot learn as better as health kids?
    5. Brain reaction of emergency
      This is very hard to get proper subjects. Suppose one is heavily injured, faint or not, some part of the brain might be crazily busy about repairing the damage. Can fMRI reveal something by comparing their record with those got when they were health or recovered?
  4. Basic Research
    1. Basic neural reflection:
      One may use the very basic level of life form with central neuro arch as the subject that can only move slowly, and catch very fast high resolution shot of MRI image in live. This may discover something new about how the simple neural system creates harmony activity of a living thing.
    2. What is happening when sleepy?
      Cast same tasks on same group of subjects when they are wide awake, tired, and extremely sleepy. And compare the pattern of brain. This experiment may be cruel. Huh.
    3. The blaze of inspiration:
      This involve a special sort of task and continuous repeated fast scan. The subject is given some questions with trivial answers. Then a special question comes in, which have to be answered in an unexpected/unusual way. Then the subject will think, and give wrong answers. Then at a point, the correct answer comes out as a blaze of inspiration. The catch snap shot might reveal how this could happen. This idea is exciting but hard to achieve. Need good luck.
    4. Practising excition of brain activity:
      One can do familiar activity easily. However, when he is asked to do something new, but with the same type of thing, one will firstly learn, then get familiar, the become well trained. The fMRI images should show difference in this sequence. However, this needs long time participation of subjects. Probably more than one day.
    5. Emotional reaction:
      It would be very hard to get the subject participate with a research concerning the emotion becuase the request might calm down the subject or make him relized he is subjected to perform. However, this might be done on primates. You will always be able to cheer up a monkey or calm it down or enrage it. Meanwhile, the head restrain system will keep it available for MRI. This is another cruel idea. Huh. Such as hate, enjoy, want, terrified, etc., may be tested.
    6. Left hand task, right hand task, and both hand task
      Something we can do same good by both left and right hand, something is in favor of left hand, some right handed. Foe somebody the left handed and right handed task might be inversed. Is is possible to compare the fMRI pattern of same tasks by doing it with different hands?
    7. Direct identification and indirect identification - secret of learning?
      The subject is shown an object, then is asked to identify it from a group of photos;
      The subject is shown a paragraph of description, then is asked to identify it from a group of photos;
      The subject is shown a photo of an object, then is asked to identify it from a group of description;
      And difference on fMRI?
      The definition of new words/simbol is taught to the subject, then he is asked to identify them among a list. Any new?
      This is to discover the secret of learning.
    8. Clear and mistiness, or exact and un-exact.
      The biggest difference between human and man-made machine is that human can understand things without definitely clear definition. How does human brain do this?
      Let's make such an experiment: Challenge the subject with a series of questions with obvious right and wrong answers, do fMRI, the challenge him with a series of questions with hard to decide answers, then challenge him with questions that have no correct or incorrect answers, but definitely by his taste. What's the difference on fMRI? Do these involve different region of brain?
    9. Self identification(charming!)
      The biggest secret of the god is that human can identify themselves. Their might be some way to design some sort of tasks that charge the self-identificaton part of human brain, and bring them under light by fMRI.
      For example, Show the subject a video clip performed by himself, and a similar clip performed by another person. Or, play a sound tape talked with him and a sound tape with the same conversation but done by others. Or, an secret agent's report, and the subject is challenged about if the agent was following him!
      Some law issue might be involved.
    10. Religion enchantment(good idea but hard to do legally)
      Challenge the subject with information encourage/discourage his belief;
      Then challenge the subject with information scientifically right and wrong;
      What's the difference between the fMRI difference?
    11. Motion animation
      Some adventure parks are equipped with machines that simulate the exciting motions with accelrations by video and limited actual bumpings. And this technique is also applied on training pilots, etc. Are there any way to research the difference in the lab? For example, put a MRI system on a Boeing-747, and do the real flight adventure. Then do it with video to the subject. (This is too wild). Something easier may be managed. Such as, 3D animation and same video without 3D animation, in lab.
    12. Primary and secondary language - does this involve different pattern of brain activity?
      This is simple and practical. We can find many subjects that can say two languages. One primary one secondary or real dual languaged. Do same understanding tasks with different languages, see the difference on fMRI.
      Also this can be done by researching the difference of languages in the brain.
    13. Balance and vertigo
      Vertigo is a problem that produce hardness to many people under many circumstances. It was claimed some problem about a tiny device in ear. However, are there fake vertigo? It is very easy to bring a subject into desired mode of vertigo by spinning him on a chair. Then the result can be compared with the patient who got into vertigo without physical reason. Maybe some unknown problem in the brain can be found.
    14. Brain status of Qigong/Yoga/etc. practicer
      And compare their idle brain activity using same task pattern as background.
    15. General problem: the connectivity between fMRI activated area
      Are them connected directly or separatedly through a bus?
  5. There are infinite list of ideas. However, the question is where are the money for these???