Disease-detecting device has great potential

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., have been quietly working with magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), a medical imaging technique that was developed to non-invasively diagnose and monitor disease. The fruit of their labors have resulted in the MR-Touch device which relies on low-frequency sound waves for a mere 15 seconds at the tail end of a typical MRI procedure in order to measure tissue elasticity. In layman’s terms, it touches the tissue via vibration instead of surgery. This could help better monitor disease progression and provide more informed preventative guidance, and kudos for making such a procedure non-invasive, much to the relief of an already beleaguered patient who has been poked and prodded all over the place.