The 2007 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine meeting looked backed at past accomplishments and forward to innovations that will define future MRI practice. The meeting, jointly sponsored with the European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology, was held in Berlin May 19 to 25, two months after the death of Paul Lauterbur, Ph.D., a key figure in the invention of MRI.

MR-guided biopsies at 3T are showing great promise in prostate cancer because of their speed and high tumor detection rate in patients with rising prostate-specific antigen levels but previous negative biopsies, according to a leading research team from the Netherlands.

show of hands from the audience at a special ISMRM/ESMRMB symposium on nephrogenic systemic fibrosis said a lot without saying a word about the growing prevalence of this condition among patients who have undergone gadolinium-based contrast-enhanced MR imaging.

From illustrating the effects of minor head injury to showing the brain activation underlying childhood intelligence, studies that combine psychological tests and functional MRI are a powerful and versatile way to make connections between human behavior and neurophysiology.

Radiologist interest in whole-body diffusion-weighted MRI for cancer applications is intensifying following preliminary studies that demonstrate its potential value for staging cancer. Whole-body DWI produces a composite image using a STIR echo-planar diffusion-weighted technique with a high b-value for background suppression.