MRI

Could patients with possible biliary and/or pancreatic disease soon be offered a piña colada before imaging? Not quite, but a team of Belgian radiologists has started serving pineapple juice labeled with gadolinium to boost the quality of its MR cholangiopancreatography scans.

In recent years, the use of MR perfusion- and diffusion-based imaging to predict tissue outcome following acute ischemic stroke has increased significantly. While most strategies to improve outcome have focused on MRI parameters, researchers from Boston and Finland have devised a novel approach that also includes spatial information.

A drainage implant or device, also known as a tube shunt, is implanted in the sclera of patients with glaucoma to maintain an artificial drainage pathway and control intraocular pressure. Intraocular pressure is lowered when aqueous humor flows from inside the eye through the tube into the space between the plate that rests on the scleral surface and surrounding fibrous capsule.(1-3)

TV cops are unlikely to visit their local MR center when extracting confessions from suspected criminals. But the appearance of 3T scanners on detective programs could simply be a matter of time, following research demonstrating the accuracy of fMRI-based lie detection.

The Gulf Coast is under attack, not from Mother Nature but from a nefarious group of evil-doers. Somehow these sneaky scoundrels have gotten their hands on an electromagnetic generator that makes hurricanes, and they are using it to pelt the U.S. with one storm after the other. That’s the theory, at least, of Scott Stevens, an Idaho TV weather forecaster.

New evidence presented this week at the 2005 Society for Molecular Imaging confirms that perfusion index measures obtained with dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI predict whether rectal cancer patients will benefit from chemoradiation.

Vascular disease in the brain may dictate the onset of dementia in the elderly, according to a study published in the September issue of Radiology.

Philips and Siemens are delivering on promises made two years ago to develop ultrahigh-field MR systems. The companies are completing construction of several 7T clinical installations, each bearing the clinical front end of a mainstream MR scanner rather than the unwieldy controls that have marked previous installations. The ramifications for the MR community are enormous.

Usually, the beginnings of great change are recognized only in hindsight. The exception to that rule may have happened Aug. 24. This was the day the developers of Cell Broadband Engine Architecture -- known informally as Cell -- flung wide the doors to the technical underpinnings of this new computing chip.

MR angiography can successfully monitor children who have had arterial switch surgery for transposition of the great arteries. Researchers in Belgium suggest the technique could spare children x-ray exposure from repeated exams and the potential toxicity of iodinated contrast agents.

Volumetric MR images show that neonatal therapies designed to help premature babies survive and thrive could help offset brain injuries associated with premature birth.

As more medical practitioners accept RFA and other tumor ablation methods for cancer treatment, physicians must determine how to integrate the procedure into their practices. The leap from academia to a clinical setting may be perilous, as tumor ablation doesn’t fit neatly into any one specialty. Does RFA belong in the interventional radiology box, the surgery box, or the oncology box?

Several cardiology societies have collaborated to update standards for training and utilization of cardiovascular CT and MR imaging, addressing increasingly burdensome credentialing requirements. The document applies only to cardiac applications and does not address extracardiac findings associated with cardiac imaging.

Parallel imaging has gone exponential in Siemens' latest version of iPAT. The advanced iPAT Squared technology allows four, eight, or even 16 times the data capture of systems without parallel imaging, according to the company. There is a catch, however: Parallel imaging is a signal hog, and that can cause problems at all but the highest field strengths.

Parallel imaging is extending the limits of resolution with anatomic and functional studies of unprecedented clarity and diagnostic value. It is cutting acquisition times by more than half to freeze motion more easily and increase patient throughput.

The American Registry of Radiologic Technologists in June celebrated its 250,000th certification. The ARRT might reach the half-million mark sooner than expected as it gears up to allow MRI techs and sonographers to be certified without first becoming radiologic technologists.

Contrast-enhanced MRI should be the modality of choice to check whether colon or pancreatic cancer has spread to the liver, according to a study from Massachusetts General Hospital.

The benchmark of any breast imaging tool is its ability to match mammography in cancer detection. Breast MRI not only holds its own in population subsets, it also promises to contribute more to breast cancer management than mammography can.

Hospitals are full of the kind of metal that can change calm into chaos: patient carts, oxygen tanks, cleaning buckets. A momentary lapse or a step too close to an MR scanner can turn a mundane staple of hospital life into a lethal projectile.

MR angiography can successfully monitor children who have had arterial switch surgery for transposition of the great arteries. Researchers in Belgium suggest the technique could spare children x-ray exposure from repeated exams and the potential toxicity of iodinated contrast agents.

Volumetric MR images show that neonatal therapies designed to help premature babies survive and thrive could help offset brain injuries associated with premature birth.

Diagnostic radiologists may be growing familiar with interactive 3D imaging tools, but surgeons' acceptance has been slower. Further use of 3D imaging in the operating room is far from inevitable if surgeons remain unconvinced of the need for computerized anatomic reconstructions. Speakers at the CARS meeting effectively countered such skepticism by highlighting practical uses of 3D imaging data in neurosurgery.

Clinicians working with an integrated system tend to be heavy users of medical images, accessing images as well as the report in four out of five cases, according to a report presented Friday.

Practical experiments show that the average person filters out a great deal of visual information. Functional MRI studies suggest that radiologists’ ocular systems become trained to sponge up that data.

Under the best of circumstances, 3T imaging of the prostate with a body coil can approximate the level of detail and sensitivity available at 1.5T with an endorectal coil. Researchers hope that with a 3T-oriented endorectal coil they will finally be able to take advantage of 3T's higher resolution in a challenging portion of the anatomy.

Cardiac CT is moving closer to competing with MR in imaging damage to the myocardium caused by infarction. A group of researchers from Aachen University of Technology in Germany presented three studies related to this ongoing race.

The venerable DICOM CT and MR image objects are now more than 10 years old, outdated by comparison with the rapidly advancing capabilities of CT and MR technologies.

A U.K. multicenter study has shown that a combination of MRI and mammography offers the best way of detecting breast cancer in women with a high genetic risk of the disease. The results add more weight to arguments for routine breast MRI for women carrying BRCA mutations and possibly for omitting mammography altogether

Increasing use of clinical 3T MR imaging has prompted the American College of Radiology to tweak its accreditation process to include the higher field strength magnets.

Stealthy magnetophages and bacterial contrast agents were among the brain candies enjoyed last week by a community starved for something new. These treats were rich in potential, creamy smooth in creativity, and a welcome change from the meat and potatoes diet that has been fed to the MR community for the past 20 years.