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Ati says | |||
| Now this was just a crazy idea tha occured to me, so let me know if you think it's stupid. My idea is as follows: you take a patient who needs to have a high resolution medical scan done, and you give them an injection of microspheres made of ferrous oxide. These spheres are each magnetized to a different level, and there are a few million of them. After they are injected, you set up a radio tranmitter that projects a steady streaam of the same signal, and hold it next to the body. Then, on the opposite side of the body you set up three receivers, and have them all cycle back and forth through the frequency band very quickly and in unsion. The idea behind this is that the iron particles will distort the radio waves passing through and around them, and produce a slightly different and unique frequency depending on how magnetized they are. The radio receivers on the other side triangulate this radiation, to pinpoint the location of each particle as it cycles through it's frequency. Then it check for variation is the emisions of these particles to determine how much and what kind of tissue are around each one. This technique would give you a very accurate map of the cardio-vascular system, and a pretty good idea of what the rest of the tissue around it is made of. It could be built fairly cheaply, and would be safer than an MRI for those who have metal in their body The only issue I can forsee if the effect of what amounts to several ounces of fragmented rust particles into the bloodstream. What to you folks think of this? |
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| Total Topic Karma: 15 | - More by this Author | |||
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Constantine says |
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| Well I don't know about a lot of it, but wouldn't it be pretty difficult to magnetize millions of microscopic spheres at different amounts, and wouldn't they tend to clump? | ||||||
| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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GringoStar says |
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| yeah, that sounds kinda rough. | ||||||
| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| well, as for magnetizing them, it would simply be a matter of using a high powered magnetic source and they would be magnetized based on their distance from the emitter source. I'm not sure abut clumping - good point though. Although the turbulance in the blood stream might stop them from clumping. If that were true it would mean that you'd have to feed them in slowly, and that there'd be a practical limit to how much you can have in active circulation in the bloodstream before clogging arteries begins to be a problem. |
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| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| wouldnt that mess with the heartbeat and stuff? you have to remember that your body might have a bad reaction to it, and a clump could cause your heart to stop. | ||||||
| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| another question is: how do you get them out safely? if you leave them in too long, clumping will almost certainly occur sooner or later. | ||||||
| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Ah true. But, you have to remember that the body has a method to handle this kind of thing already. It's called the kidneys. They would quickly realize that something is up and start pulling the particles out. The real question isn't what effect a large amount of iron would have on the bloodstream, but what it would have on the kidneys. Also, the real risk wouldn't be the heart, which is fairly robust, but the very small, slow flowing blood vessels in the brain, which could get clogged fairly easily. Again, luckily the brain has redundant blood-flow to the important stuff, but it would probably limit the frequency with which this proceedure could be performed (you'd have to wait for the iron content to go below safe levels before doing it again) |
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| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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GringoStar says |
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| there is something that generally permits large things from getting to the brain, or was it small particles? i dont remember what it was called now. blood brain barrier? | ||||||
| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| That's true - I had forgotten about that (plus one karma to you). According to Wikipedia: 'Substances with a molecular weight higher than 500 daltons (500 u) generally cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, while smaller molecules often can.' Which would count out iron particles, unless they were chemically attached to something with a lower atomic weight. As it happens, the iron in iron oxide is attached to something else (oxygen), but it's in a different configuration than hemoglobin, with more iron than oxygen, so it whould be alright. I suppose the other thing to think about would be whether something like this could cause problems in the capilaries and other small, non-brain blood vessels. It would require a careful balancing act to make the particles small enought to avoid clogging the small vessels, but large enough that the kidneys will filter them out before iron poisening becomes a problem. |
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| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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GringoStar says |
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| Finally, my relentless research of recreational drugs has paid off! In the form of a karma. totally worth it. (why do I love getting Karma so much?) |
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| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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Constantine says |
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| That is how it was designed. Kudos are their own type of drug. |
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| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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GringoStar says |
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| so i have noticed. I try to stay away from addictive substances, but I missed this one. Now I can't quit! | ||||||
| - 31 January, 2007 | ||||||
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Chadrack says |
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fortunately my fasting doesn't include from karma..  |
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| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Rathmaster says |
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| magnetic kidney stones and blood clots sound like a lot of not fun. | ||||||
| - 01 February, 2007 | ||||||
| vaseemali says |
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| i read in one of micheal crichton novel called PREY.the microspheres u describe r called as nanobots or something i dont remember that well.they can even communicate between themselves and try to imitate a PREDATOR-PREY model.first they r injected into blood and take high res pics (yes they have cameras)and r led into a machine which filters them out.seems plausible for inputting and outputting them.sorry if im wandering into fantasy! | ||||||
| - 04 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Constantine says |
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| Vaseemali, the spheres he describes are not imbued with any sort of intelligence, and they are not there to do anything besides be different then the surrounding tissue. In the future nanomachines could play a huge role in fighting disease/virii/cancer/etc if we get to a point where they can be targeted towards certain types of cells/tissue. | ||||||
| - 04 February, 2007 | ||||||
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Ati says |
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| Well, actually, it was Prey that kind of inspired the idea in the first place. Of course, these spheres have no intelligence or mechanical functioning. I did a little research and discovered the following: * capilaries are about 8 microns in diameter. This means that if the particles were made to be about 1-2 microns in width, they would still be safe until a considerable amount of clumping had taken place. * there is a chemical used for iron treatment: deferoxamine mesylate. This binds to iron particles and causes them to be picked up by the kidneys and ejected. It is currently used to treat accidental iron poisening in children and is known to be safe. * The minimum toxic does of iron for a human infant is about 60 mg, so if only about 60mg are used, it should be safe in adults. *Also,iron is primarily toxic to the digestive tract, and it takes some time for something injected to make its way into the stomach, intestines, etc. (which are primarily intended to expel things). To summarize the information above: If the particles are kept to about 1-2 microns in width, the total quantity is kept to below sixty milligrams, and the particles are immediately accompanied by deferoxamine mesylate, it whould be absolutely safe. |
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| - 04 February, 2007 | ||||||
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