<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>These elegant images were created by Andrew Ellison, chief research MRI technologist at the School of Medicine, who creates them by scanning fruits and vegetables. Photo by Cydney Scott<\/p>\n<p>It began with an orange. As chief research MRI technologist at the School of Medicine, Andrew Ellison is entrusted with costly, sophisticated scanning equipment that he must warm up and calibrate for accuracy day after day. Since MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is a diagnostic tool that looks at soft tissues, Ellison decided on a whim one day to do one of these routine test scans on a piece of fruit. The resulting image of an orange was so stunning he began scanning other fruits and vegetables, including a strawberry, an artichoke, a pomegranate, an ear of corn, celery root, and a tomato. He then posted them on Reddit. Seen anew through this rare lens, they are works of art.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were testing different protocols and parameters and wanted something a little more complicated than a bottle of water, which we\u2019d been using as a so-called phantom,\u201d recalls Ellison, who graduated from Suffolk University in 2007 with a degree in biology and has been working at BU for seven years. \u201cSo we scanned an orange, and I was like, wow, that looks really cool, and from then on out anytime I needed to do quality assurance on the machine I would use a different type of fruit rather than a boring phantom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Almost immediately after he created those first images in spring 2008, Ellison found his work drawing attention from both the science and the food worlds. Within months, the images, and animations he crafted from them, were showing up in media from Science to <em>Bon Appetit<\/em> to <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/mri-scans-of-food-2012-6?op=1\">Business Insider<\/a><\/em>. A July 2010 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2010\/07\/21\/mri_scans_of_produce\/\">story<\/a> invited Salon.com readers to look \u201cinto the soul of fruit with MRI scans.\u201d That same year, Science ran a short piece about Ellison titled \u201cArt from Produce,\u201d and a National Public Radio story focused on his \u201cghostly produce.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4003\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4003\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/camed\/files\/2013\/06\/Exotic-Fruit-BU-Today1.gif\" alt=\"Ellison created this animation from MRI scans of broccoli. Image courtesy of Andrew Ellison\" title=\"Exotic Fruit BU Today\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4003\" height=\"600\" width=\"600\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4003\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ellison created this animation from MRI scans of broccoli. Image courtesy of Andrew Ellison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>More recently, Discovery.com showcased his images in an October 2012 feature: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/news.discovery.com\/tech\/mri-undresses-fruit-and-vegetables-121005.htm\">MRI Undresses Fruits and Vegetables<\/a>.\u201d To date, Ellison has scanned more than 60 fruits and vegetables. The images now live on his popular <a href=\"http:\/\/insideinsides.blogspot.com\/\">blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Prints of the black-and-white images also adorn the halls of the corridor outside Ellison\u2019s office, where he often toils alone. A cross section of a pineapple is reminiscent of a shadowy X-ray of a human chest. The folds of an artichoke seem reflected in water, and a slice of pomegranate could be mistaken for a microscopic glimpse of a living cell.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s interesting; I didn\u2019t have the foresight to see this going in as big a direction as it went,\u201d says Ellison, who shares the images and GIF (graphics interchange format) animations for free. \u201cI get huge hit numbers from foodies, artists, and scientists, so the blog sits very happily in this realm of big internet hit generators.\u201d The blog images get thousands of hits from US viewers each month, as well as from as far away as Mexico, Indonesia, Hungary, Russia, Spain, Australia, and the Netherlands, where one of his fruit scans was used in a poster for an Amsterdam food festival.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike the busy MRI unit down the road at <a href=\"http:\/\/bmc.org\">Boston Medical Center<\/a>, the MED unit is exclusively for research, so there\u2019s a lot of downtime, and scanning fruits is a good way to keep the machine active, Ellison says. To scan the fruits, he freezes a series of 10 to 15 images the thickness of a millimeter or less. \u201cIt\u2019s a good way to make sure the machinery can keep up to the level it needs to be at, because there are about 40 different pieces of equipment that all need to be in working order,\u201d he says of the Philips Tesla MRI, which is used on animal as well as human subjects.<\/p>\n<p>His creations have drawn the attention of the MRI manufacturer as well. \u201cPhilips has a publication, and they gave me a whole-page spread,\u201d says Ellison, who has begun \u201cexperimenting for the sake of art.\u201d His latest forays involve using thick fruit and vegetable slices, which, he says, \u201clook wicked cool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This <em>BU Today<\/em> story was written by Susan Seligson. Slideshow by Kristina Roman (COM’08)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As art or science, MED tech\u2019s MRIs enchant These elegant images were created by Andrew Ellison, chief research MRI technologist at the School of Medicine, who creates them by scanning fruits and vegetables. Photo by Cydney Scott It began with an orange. As chief research MRI technologist at the School of Medicine, Andrew Ellison […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6828"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}