Tianjin Uni Innovates DNA Storage for Brain MRI Data 🧬🧠 - 🌍NewspaperAmigo

Exciting news from Tianjin University! Researchers at the Frontiers Science Center for Synthetic Biology, in collaboration with Tianjin Huanhu Hospital, have achieved a groundbreaking advancement in DNA-based data storage. Introducing the innovative DNA Palette coding scheme, this new method allows for the encoding of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data into DNA, enabling lossless decoding and 3D reconstruction of the imaging data.

The study, published in the National Science Review, addresses a critical challenge in the medical field: the vast amounts of data generated by brain MRI scans. These scans are essential for clinical diagnosis, surgical planning, and treatment evaluation, especially for chronic conditions like juvenile Parkinson's, epilepsy, and neurogenetic disorders that require lifelong data accumulation and analysis.

Traditional storage mediums struggle to keep up with the high demand for large-scale, long-term data storage. Enter DNA – known for its exceptional stability and storage density. The Tianjin University team successfully encoded 11.28 megabytes of brain MRI data into approximately 250,000 DNA sequences, achieving an impressive data density of 2.39 bits per base. The encoded oligos, stored in dry powder form, weigh just 3 micrograms and support over 300 read operations under current technical standards.

This breakthrough showcases DNA's potential as a long-term, efficient, and secure storage medium for medical data. It marks a crucial step toward the practical application of DNA data storage, offering a new technical route for the secure storage of large amounts of medical data and accelerating the broader adoption of DNA-based storage technologies.