Students from Graveney School along with Orbyts Fellow Klara Mišak from UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering conducted an investigation into enhancing the accuracy and reproducibility of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for breast cancer screening. Current mammography techniques often miss cancers, particularly in dense breast tissue, and existing breast MRI methods suffer from variability across machines and technicians, lacking a standardised reference for accuracy over time. This research addresses these challenges by developing and validating MRI phantom technology, which is essential for ensuring consistent and reliable imaging results.

The research yielded significant findings regarding the reproducibility of T1 and T2 measurements, crucial parameters in MRI for quantitatively identifying different tissue types. The T1 relaxation curves for both adipose tissue (FAT) and a specific gel (FGT) were analysed, demonstrating the characteristic signal intensity over time. A key achievement was the phantom reproducibility analysis, which showed remarkably low coefficients of variation (CV) for T1 and T2 measurements.

These small CV values underscore the high consistency and reliability of the measurements obtained from the phantom, indicating that the results changed minimally between scans. This consistency is vital for developing MRI techniques that can accurately assess tumour size, shape, and location, thereby minimizing damage to healthy tissue during treatments like radiotherapy.

The findings strongly suggest that MRI, with the aid of these validated phantoms, holds strong potential for breast screening due to its enhanced specificity compared to traditional mammography, particularly in dense breast tissue. The next crucial step involves quantifying image distortion to ensure both geometric accuracy and clinical meaningfulness of MRI results!