What magnetic resonance imaging is to Medicine, GEO-MRI is to Earth Sciences (Part II)

I recently had to have an old fracture injury to my left elbow examined by MRI: Suspected severe osteoarthritis, bone wear, etc. 'Was already predicted to me 38 years ago after a severe mountain accident. Just like with "climate change", the "medical models" back then were (unfortunately) very close to today's reality. Correspondingly, I went with thick earmuffs into the high-tech tube of a specialized medical imaging clinic at magnetic field strengths up to 1.5 Tesla. It was not at all pleasant to be pushed very slowly through the tube with the elbow stretched upwards in a somewhat strange body posture. During the entire tomography examination, there was a lot of reddening and humming at the various operating frequencies of the MRI tube (so: hearing protection is definitely a necessity!) In the end, the diagnosis was specified as: "Cubital arthrosis post-traumatic and sulcus ulnaris syndrome" - a not uncommon occurrence among athletes and individuals in certain occupations who ruin their elbows by overloading and the like. In any case, not a big surprise, nor that the nerve strands are by now relatively severely affected, and symptoms of this nerve damage reaching into the left hand.

But what does all this have to do with GEO-MRI?

Fig.1: Vista-Clara Inc. technology as an example of innovative downhole and surface GEO-MRI applications for the investigation of soil moisture, porosity and groundwater resources. The GEO-MRI principle borrows heavily from medical magnetic resonance imaging as it has been steadily developed and improved for over 60 years. Vista-Clara's technology also has its origins in medicine and is now increasingly being advanced in the form of R&D projects. An example of the application of modern Medical Magnetic Resonance Imaging can be seen in the panel photos below (left elbow, with severely arthritic and deformative bone symptoms, already having a negative impact on the nerve pathways down to the left hand).

Well: As the physician uses MRI for his "arthrosis diagnosis" by showcasing a disturbance of the original highly water-containing tissue (cartilage, nerves, muscles, etc.), the geophysicist tries to reconstruct with GEO-MRI tools the amount and quality of a contaminant, which interferes with the "undisturbed" subsurface water flow. In short: With such an instrument the expert geophysicist can (a bit similar to the medical MRI diagnostics) detect subsurface liquid flow disturbances - for example, caused by oils, tar deposits and the like.

In our industry, these are usually typical "soil remediation cases" involving so-called "NAPLs": Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids." That is, anything that is a liquid, but not H2O. This contamination is noticeable in a GEO-MRI profile by a characteristic signal disturbance at the various resonance frequencies, similar to medical diagnostics where compromised body structures appear "deformed", "discolored", etc. compared to intact tissue. The details of my medical MRI examination I could not follow 100% ad-hoc, but it was very impressive how the attending doctor diagnosed from the black-gray-white shades the arthritic areas, bone abrasion, etc., very quickly. The same is true for the exploration of soil contamination using the GEO-MRI methodology. Of course, like anywhere else with anything else: practice and experience make perfect...

Fig.2: GEO-MRI studis with the so-called DART (which we already know from the "Vista-Clara Boot Camp 2022"), allow to identify different water-oil mixtures in the subsurface. These studies are currently part of a broad research project with different industry and academic partners, and already show very promising results. Note the different frequencies where characteristic signal perturbations occur due to various NAPL contamination levels.

In the case of GEO-MRI, we need additional preliminary studies suggesting different NAPL perturbations to identify the characteristic signal change at specific resonance frequencies. In field applications, it requires measurements in the disturbed and undisturbed medium to draw relevant comparisons between "clean" and "contaminated" ground. How this works, Vista-Clara Inc. has resolved by now with increasing success through detailed R&D experiments in the laboratory and during various field measurement. During ongoing research and project deployments the company currently acquires and delivers partly very astonishing results with their innovative technology.

To learn more about these kind of R&D projects, contact Vista-Clara Inc. directly, or us as European proxy partners | participants for ongoing ventures.