Credit goes to Yale University researchers for developing a new kind of magnetic resonance imaging that successfully allowed technicians to see inside animal bones and tissues. While regular MRI machines use strong magnets and radio wave bursts to manipulate a given object's hydrogen atoms to build an image, the Yale method takes a different approach. As explained on the website Futurity.org, their machine used signals given off by phosphorus atoms in both hard and soft solids, plus more elaborate radio wave pulse sequences. To date, the Yale team has used its machine on non-living animal samples, including cow and rabbit bone, and mouse liver. In the future, they see the machine potentially complementing traditional MRI. Details are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Photo courtesy of Yale University) Story
