MRI

MR imaging prior to fibroid embolization therapy can uncover pelvic pathology, including adenomyosis and endometrial lesions, that might result in a decision not to proceed with uterine artery embolization, researchers report.

The use of MR imaging to screen adolescent baseball and college basketball players may avert injuries that could take them out of the game, according to a pair of research papers presented Thursday.

Researchers in Germany believe that MR imaging should be included among the World Health Organization’s options for diagnosing sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), which is associated with exposure to mad cow disease.

New data are refueling the drive for further utilization of MR imaging in the triage and characterization of breast cancer, according to studies presented Wednesday.

Research from Duke University, where stress fractures of the fifth metatarsal have been the proverbial Achilles heel of more than one Blue Devil basketball star, may help team practitioners identify players at risk for this injury even before symptoms develop.

In preliminary results from a three-country randomized trial, researchers report finding a correlation between MRI signs and the clinical symptoms seen in patients with multiple system atrophy (MSA) and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP).

An Israeli HMO has reduced its high-tech imaging costs with the help of American College of Radiology appropriateness criteria that guide CT and MR use for its 1.6 million members.

With the help of diffusion-weighted imaging, spectroscopy, and directionally encoded color maps, MR is advancing understanding of hippocampal abnormalities in patients with intractable temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).

Patients hate endorectal coils. But results presented at RSNA 2004 show without equivocation that the devices boost the diagnostic confidence of imaging studies critical to determining how prostate disease should be properly managed.

Interventional radiologists can now see liver tumors freezing in real-time on MR imaging as they perform thermal ablation, according to Harvard researchers.

It’s been awhile since the imaging community paid much attention to open MR. But several products being exhibited this week at the RSNA meeting could perk up interest.

Radiologists need to communicate with referring physicians more often and listen more closely to orthopedics surgeons’ reporting preferences, according to the results of University of California, San Diego survey that were announced Tuesday at the RSNA meeting.

The disruption of dopamine transportation in brain white matter may be the underlying reason that children suffer from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. In addition, MR diffusion tensor imaging suggests that drug therapy repairs the damaged fiber bundles indicated in ADHD pathology.

The growing popularity of noncardiac pacemakers is putting additional pressures on radiologists to recognize them on MR imaging, check for their proper positioning and complications, and determine the MR compatibility of the various devices.

Abdominal MR angiography can now be performed in real-time, essentially eliminating digital subtraction angiography’s one remaining edge, according to a study published in the October issue of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

You’re offered a giant bowl of rocky road ice cream on Thanksgiving, but you’d like to lose 15 pounds by New Year’s Day. What do you do? Princeton University researchers have discovered that two separate brain areas are involved in the decision to choose short-term satisfaction or settle for long-term happiness.

British researchers say they have found an effective way to combine PET and MR in one system. They intend to get a prototype animal imaging model up and running by the end of 2005 to prove their claim.

Sales of gamma cameras have been flat for so long they have become one of the few certainties in the otherwise unpredictable marketplace of medical imaging. True to form, the two factors in a major predictor of future change, equipment orders versus sales, were virtually equal for gamma cameras in the first half of 2004 at about $185 million for North American customers. But there is reason to believe that will change and that the progenitor of this change will be SPECT/CT.

Drug manufacturers are increasingly relying on functional MRI to help assess the efficacy of psychiatric drugs. It could potentially save millions of dollars and help speed effective drugs to the marketplace, according to speakers at the Horizon Seminar “Imaging and Healthcare: The Future” held last month in Cambridge, U.K.

MRI manufacturers responded to claustrophobic patients by developing open scanners. Now researchers have gone one step further: They’ve developed an MR scanner that enters the patient, rather than vice versa.

The FDA gave final approval last Friday for marketing of the first MR-guided focused ultrasound ablation system for treatment of uterine fibroids. Application caveats remain, however.

The introduction of open-bore technology spurred the spread of MR imaging from preoperative diagnosis to intraoperative monitoring. But MR’s surgical scope could go only as far as low-field systems allowed.

The government today announced its participation in one of the largest initiatives to date to determine effective neuroimaging techniques that will help chart brain changes associated with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. The announcement comes barely two weeks after Medicare agreed to reimburse for PET studies of suspected Alzheimer’s patients.

If you think cardiology is the only opportunity for niche CT, think again. CT could well be on the verge of a major change in usage fomented not by technology but by perspective. And MR might not be far behind. As happens so often, history will guide the way.