NYU Langone’s Department of Radiology and Facebook have announced a new collaborative research project called fastMRI that will investigate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make MRI scans up to 10 times faster. If this effort is successful, it will make MRI available to more people and lead to an improved patient experience, with reduced time spent in the machines having to remain still during imaging of the heart, liver, or other organs in the abdomen and torso. Increased speed could also let MRI scans fill the role of X-ray and CT scans for some applications, which would help reduce radiation exposure for patients.

NYU Langone’s team is led by Michael P. Recht, MD, chair and Louis Marx Professor of Radiology in the Department of Radiology, Daniel K. Sodickson, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research (CAI2R) and vice chair for research in the Department of Radiology, and Yvonne W. Lui, MD, associate chair of artificial intelligence and associate professor in the Department of Radiology.

The Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) group, which focuses on open and foundational research that advances the state of AI, was looking for projects in which AI could have a significant real-world impact. CAI2R’s image reconstruction work fit these criteria and provided FAIR with an opportunity to combine its deep learning expertise and its ability to train models at large scale with the medical school’s leading imaging science expertise.

“You could be in and out in five minutes. It would be a real game-changer,” Dr. Sodickson tells CNNMoney.

Read more from CNNMoney. You also can read more about this collaboration on Facebook.