For patients awaiting magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, a procedure that can provide crucial information for diagnosing serious medical conditions, time is often more than a matter of convenience. In some cases, it can influence how quickly doctors identify a condition and begin treatment.
Yet, conventional MRI scans can take between 20 minutes and an hour or longer, depending on the type of examination. For patients who are elderly, seriously ill, in pain, anxious or unable to remain still for extended periods, the experience can be physically and psychologically demanding.
It is against this backdrop that the development of a new artificial intelligence-powered imaging technology by Nigerian researcher, Dr Mary-Brenda Akoda, is attracting attention from the medical and scientific communities.
Akoda, winner of the 2026 Nigeria Prize for Science and Innovation, NPSI, developed GenMRI, a technology designed to reduce MRI acquisition times by as much as 90 per cent without requiring new imaging hardware.
The innovation was unveiled in Abuja as the Federal Government pledged greater support to move the technology beyond scientific recognition towards clinical application, investment and commercialisation.
The significance of the technology lies not simply in making an MRI scan faster, but in what faster imaging could mean for diagnosis.
When time matters
Medical diagnosis often depends on how quickly clinicians can obtain reliable information about what is happening inside a patient’s body.
For conditions requiring urgent intervention, delays in imaging can create a critical gap between the patient’s arrival at a hospital and the beginning of appropriate treatment.
Akoda said her motivation for developing GenMRI was partly rooted in a personal experience involving an elderly relative who suffered a stroke and needed urgent imaging but experienced delays before his condition deteriorated.
That experience, she explained, reinforced the importance of shortening the time patients spend waiting for diagnostic imaging.
“The difference between life and death is often how quickly that patient gets diagnosed,” Akoda said.
Her technology is designed to address that challenge precisely by using artificial intelligence to reconstruct diagnostic-quality MRI images from a fraction of the data traditionally required.
According to Akoda, a conventional 20-minute MRI scan could potentially be completed in about two minutes using GenMRI, while an examination that normally takes an hour could take approximately six minutes.
The implications could extend beyond shorter waiting times.
The patient at the centre of innovation
The importance of reducing MRI scan times becomes clearer when the experience of patients is considered.
Unlike some diagnostic procedures, MRI requires patients to remain relatively still while images are acquired. Movement can affect image quality and may result in the need for additional scans.
Nigeria LNG Limited’s Executive General Manager for External Relations and Sustainable Development, Dr Sophia Horsfall, said prolonged MRI procedures could be particularly difficult for patients who are in pain, anxious, elderly, ill or unable to remain still.
In such circumstances, shortening the procedure could potentially improve the patient’s experience while reducing the likelihood of compromised images and repeat procedures.
For healthcare facilities, faster imaging could also mean that an MRI machine is available for more patients within the same period.
This is particularly significant in health systems where access to advanced diagnostic equipment is limited and demand can exceed available capacity.
AI without replacing existing infrastructure
One of the notable features of GenMRI is that it is designed to work with existing MRI hardware.
That distinction is important for healthcare systems such as Nigeria’s, where the cost of acquiring and maintaining sophisticated medical equipment can be a major barrier to expanding diagnostic capacity.
Instead of requiring hospitals to replace their MRI machines, the technology seeks to improve what existing infrastructure can deliver through artificial intelligence.
Akoda said GenMRI had achieved up to 99.7 per cent similarity to conventional MRI scans. She also said blinded assessments by consultant radiologists found the AI-generated images diagnostically equivalent to conventional images in all the cases assessed.
The claims will nevertheless need to be evaluated through broader clinical testing and implementation before the technology can become part of routine medical practice on a large scale.
Akoda said GenMRI had received support from Innovate UK, the UK Research and Innovation ecosystem and the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, with clinical partners in the United Kingdom, United States, Kenya and Nigeria.
From laboratory to hospital
For an innovation to transform healthcare, scientific achievement alone is not enough.
It must move through clinical validation, regulatory processes, investment, deployment and continuous evaluation before patients can benefit from it at scale.
This was a major focus of the Federal Government’s response to the GenMRI breakthrough.
The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate, said the government would support efforts to move the technology from scientific recognition to clinical application, investment and commercialisation.
He described the 2026 prize as evidence of the potential for Nigerian innovation to address problems beyond the country.
The minister also challenged Akoda to explore applications beyond MRI, including CT scans, chest X-rays and angiography.
“You don’t limit this to MRI alone,” he said, urging the researcher to consider the broader potential of the technology.
The challenge points to a wider question about medical innovation in Nigeria: how can promising research move from academic institutions and laboratories into hospitals and ultimately improve patient outcomes?
Innovation as a healthcare necessity
The 2026 NPSI attracted 237 entries before GenScan AI was selected as the winning innovation. The outcome was particularly notable because no entry had met the prize’s standard in the previous year.
The Minister said the absence of a winner in 2025 had highlighted the need for greater innovation.
“Without innovation, Nigeria could not hope to compete in a digital future,” he said.
For Prof. Barth Nnaji, Chairman of the NPSI Advisory Board, the prize is intended to recognise innovations that solve significant problems and demonstrate practical impact rather than simply rewarding academic research.
He described Akoda’s achievement as potentially transformative beyond Nigeria.
“It looks like Dr Mary Akoda has done it for the world, not just for Nigeria, but for the world,” Nnaji said.
That distinction is particularly relevant in healthcare, where the value of innovation is ultimately measured by whether it can make diagnosis, treatment and patient care more effective and accessible.
The road ahead
Despite the promise surrounding GenMRI, its journey from innovation to widespread clinical use will require partnerships.
Akoda has called for collaboration with Nigerian diagnostic centres, health innovators and funders to accelerate testing and adoption.
Such partnerships could help establish how the technology performs across different MRI systems, patient populations and clinical conditions, while also determining the regulatory, financial and operational requirements for deployment.
If successful, the broader significance of GenMRI could extend beyond reducing the duration of an MRI examination.
It could demonstrate how artificial intelligence can be used to make existing medical infrastructure more efficient, potentially allowing healthcare providers to serve more patients without immediately having to invest in entirely new imaging hardware.
For patients, however, the most important measure may remain simple: how quickly and accurately a doctor can obtain the information needed to make a diagnosis.
Akoda said the ultimate objective of her work was to ensure that patients do not lose critical time while waiting for diagnostic imaging.
“Ultimately, our vision is that no one should suffer or die because of a delayed diagnosis,” she said.
