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The Next New Toy For Astronauts? Portable MRI Machines

If we want to send astronauts to Mars, they're going to need an MRI once in a while.
This photo of an unrelated experiment shows just how tight the ISS is. Image: NASA

As we look to a future of longer spaceflight, being able to track small changes in astronauts' bodies is crucial. Now, a team of engineers think they've found a solution.

While astronauts already have all sorts of sophisticated equipment for medical diagnoses on the International Space Station, a magnetic resonance imaging machine still isn't one of them. It's understandable: MRI machines aren't exactly compact.

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But if you want to track how the effects of microgravity contributes to an astronaut's loss of bone and muscle mass over time, that's a truly significant problem. Especially as we plan to send astronauts farther and for longer into space than ever before. In other words, an MRI machine might just be a good tool to have lying around for the first manned mission to Mars.

Luckily, for several years now, a team led by University of Saskatchewan professor and acting chair of biomedical engineering Gordon Sarty have set out to develop what he called the "first MRI design suitable for human spaceflight."

This sketch from Sarty's site shows how a full-body MRI machine isn't much of an option on the ISS. Image: MRI in Space Project

As currently envisioned, it will be a tiny box with a hole for an astronaut's arm, and a big departure from existing MRI tech. Currently, the project has CSA funding for its study phase; if the project continues to win funding, Sarty expects the machine will fly by 2016, for the low cost of just $10 million dollars.

Related: Space Is Becoming the Canadian Government's Favourite Public Relations Frontier

"The current [planned] procedure is an astronaut would image their wrists once a month, and then you could follow the bone density changes and muscle density and volume changes throughout the flight," said Sarty in an interview. He's working with the Canadian aerospace engineering firm COM DEV Canada on miniaturizing the required radio.

"Right now, there are Lots of MRIs done of astronauts before, and then after, but none during. So this would be the first step," he said.

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The Canadian Space Agency first sent out a request in mid-2013 for life science project proposals that could fly aboard the ISS, and Sarty's "portable MRI" project was one of five given funding for preliminary research that took place between January and May of this year.

Traditional MRI machines are incredibly big and incredibly heavy, and sending large object to space is far from cheap. Additionally, ISS member countries have limits on just how much they can launch on each resupply mission. Sarty said that, with a goal of building a machine that weighs no more than Canada's flight allotment of 50 kilograms, the idea of a full-body MRI machine was out.

"You could partner [on weight allowances], but there's a whole lot more politics involved," said Sarty. "You have to make international agreements to get that sort of thing done."

Fifty kilograms is still a lot. The portable MRI, in this case, is perhaps more akin to what "portable" meant for computing in the late 1980s, than how you currently think of your phone, but the goal still represents a major shrinking of MRI tech.

Everything you wanted to know about MRIs and were too afraid to ask.

Unsurprisingly, an MRI's magnet is typically what has the most mass. By using a different type of magnet, known as a Halbach array, than traditional MRIs, the team has been able to reduce the weight significantly. In addition, the magnet array can be controlled through "the manipulation of transmitted [radio frequencies] rather than through magnetic field gradients," according to Sarty's site, which means a quieter, lower-power machine.

Sarty points out that his team's new MRI design scaled up to full-body size could have benefits for terrestrial Canadians, too. Its relatively small footprint and weight make it a perfect candidate for delivery to remote communities scattered all over the vast Canadian land space. Compared to the scans produced by a traditional MRI, the experience would also be, in his words, "essentially the same."

Right now, Sarty's team is waiting to see if it will get funding after sending in its proposal this fall. He estimates they would start working on the machine in January 2015 if accepted by the CSA. From there, Sarty said they'll have 18 months to design, build, and package the whole thing up to send on its way, "all in that short period of time."

And if all goes well, astronauts will have their portable MRI by 2017. Not that they'll have a whole lot of time to spend with the machine, of course. Sarty estimates that, given the nature of ISS experiments and the amount of time allotted for Canadian science over the course of a half-year mission, the space MRI will get just 15 minutes of use per month.