
Facebook and Oculus exec leaving to work on wearable MRI - T-A
http://www.digitaltrends.com/health-fitness/wearable-mri-jepsen/
======
throw_128475
> Jepsen, whose background and resume could leave most people gasping, is one
> of tech’s true, long-haul, entrepreneurial visionaries.

AFAICT, Jepsen has been more of a seagull [1] than anything. The reality is...
she's been a high profile participant in a series of short-term, failed
endeavors -- from OLPC, Pixel Qi, a failed Google[x] project, and now a very
short stint at FB. All of these failings are well documented on Wikipedia [2].
They sound good in principle, but have never delivered.

The MRI goal is laudable, and I hope for humanity's sake that it works. But
I'd hold off on the admiration until it's more than vaporware -- especially
with Jepsen at the helm.

 _Throw away account since I 'm too close to her past endeavors to speak
publicly._

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_manager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_manager)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Jepsen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Jepsen)

~~~
bigethan
So, in your estimation, what's an acceptable success rate for someone who only
really works on moon shot ideas? I'm curious why you think she's a bellwether
for failure as opposed to someone who is driven to take on world changing
ideas.

If you're only going to say "I'm too close to her" and call her some bad
things with an anon account, well, you probably just shouldn't have posted.
I'm all for learning from the experiences people have interacting with the
technocrati, but this post feels petty and lacks information.

~~~
jqgatsby
"once, you're lucky. twice, you're good" could be a reasonable metric for
execs who take on high risk projects.

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roywiggins
Current MRIs need liquid helium to keep their electromagnets superconducting.
Short of room-temperature superconductors... how are they planning to pull
this off?

Screw wearability, being able to make an MRI machine smaller than a small car
that doesn't need helium would be worth $$$ on its own.

~~~
smitec
There are a number of machines that don't use superconducting magnets and
hence don't have such stringent cooling needs. These machines typically need
these sort of cooling setups to support higher fields but imaging is still
possible at low field. Some years ago, and I'm by no means up to date with
this, there was a group working on imaging using the earth's magnetic field as
the main field [1]. While this is the extreme MRI has been functional longer
than superconducting magnets have been feasible.

On the flip side of this things like compressed sensing and MRI fingerprinting
[2] reduce further the need for a traditional 'full' scan. We are still some
way off seeing these sorts of things in clinical MRI but that may be more
attributable to the pace at which companies like GE and Phillips move in this
space. That and the sheer cost of R&D.

Overall it is a pretty exciting time to be in MRI, despite the outside view
being that it has changed very little in recent decades.

disclosure: PhD candidate in electrical engineering, focused on MRI

[1]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16828566](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16828566)
[2]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376817/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376817/)

~~~
petra
How is the patent situation? Does a well funded startup have a chance to
disrupt this field ?

Because if the potential were seeing in research on fmri neurofeedback for
example does work, we might be talking about something that will make virtual
reality look insignificant.

One example is accelerating mental learning processes that take experienced
meditators decades(they call it enlightenment which leads to development of
deeply happy and caring human beings ) into a period of weeks/months of a much
less intense effort, so the experience may be available to everyone, not just
a rare few.

~~~
smitec
MRI like a lot of other med tech is very heavily patented. The core tech has
long since expired but any of the cutting edge work will probably have patents
around it. I do believe that an MRI startup has a chance to disrupt but it may
be more of an innovation in application, or accessibility than in pure
technology.

~~~
petra
>> innovation in accessibility

Do you mean business model innovation ?

~~~
smitec
Yeah essentially, I meant that in the sense of innovating how people access
MRI scans and the data associated with them.

------
mhalle
Mary Lou Jepsen gave a talk about her ideas at the Media Lab 30th anniversary:

[http://www.media.mit.edu/video/view/ml30-2015-10-30-03](http://www.media.mit.edu/video/view/ml30-2015-10-30-03)

Her talk starts at about 45:20.

~~~
rl3
Jepsen intends to build a "Diffuse Optical Tomography"[0] system using liquid
crystals as a means of achieving both miniaturization as well as a dramatic
increase in the emitter count. A beanie hat was used as a visualization of the
final consumer-facing product.

Suffice it to say, there will probably be no use of low-field MR, nor anything
like MEG—let alone both.[1][2]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_optical_imaging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_optical_imaging)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography)

[2]
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726102756.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726102756.htm)

------
gjolund
I wonder how much of this is due to Oculus's clear lagging behind it
competitors.

HTC and Sony both have platforms that a more robust and better positioned to
capture gamers than Oculus.

I wouldn't want to stick around either.

~~~
Raphmedia
I'm not so sure about that. Once the touch controllers start shipping out with
the second camera, they will be equal if not better than the competition.

They are also researching inside out tracking for mobile VR which is very
exciting!

~~~
gjolund
Have you used an HTC Vive?

I have a couple oculus and they are nowhere near the HTC Vive in terms of
immersion.

~~~
pmh
I've recently used both and think they're equal in terms of immersion when the
Vive is roughly around the minimum space requirements. For gaming, I could
take either; for non-gaming experiences, I haven't seen anything on the Vive
that wouldn't feel similar on the Oculus or vice-versa.

If you have a large open space the Vive may pull ahead, but I haven't tried
anything that could take advantage of that.

FWIW, I was sold on VR when I first tried DK1, but now having tried the
consumer version and the Vive (years later), I'm even more excited.

~~~
gjolund
I found the vive to be much more immersive, and the games being developed for
it felt like they truly understood the capabilities of VR.

I'm really excited about the competition in the space, it is only going to be
good for VR enthusiasts.

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caycep
I think the undercurrent behind this is the new magnetorheological
technologies now available...before, the solid state physics behind the
magnets necessitates the huge size of the things...

~~~
neuro_imager
Please would you elaborate on this? Or provide some sort of reference?

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benbojangles
I think that it is more likely the exec is going to apply Augmented VR for
viewing MRI imaging. So, 'wearable MRI' is somewhat Misinterpreted. I doubt it
is an actual MRI scanner, just a novelty way of augmentation

~~~
benbojangles
But I suppose you've got to try to generate billions somehow :)

