MRI

Researchers in San Francisco have found that MR imaging can accurately predict recurrence and development of metastatic disease in patients who are about to undergo radiation therapy for prostate cancer. Study findings suggest a stronger role for MRI in the management of the condition.

We are already eight years into the New Millennium. The Y2K crisis is a distant memory, and debate about whether the new century actually began in 2000 or 2001 is far behind us.

Hitachi executives hope their booth at the ISMRM meeting will serve as a springboard for sales of their open 1.2T Oasis, set to begin shipping this month. The new high-field scanner is the company’s chance to rekindle a market that has all but collapsed in the past several years with the advent of compact wide-bore 1.5T devices and expanding clinical applications for such high-performance systems.

Above and around the Siemens Healthcare booth at the ISMRM meeting, the message “pushing the boundaries of MR” was as clear as it could be. The theme was driven home by pennants featuring iconic reconstructions of athletes into whole-body 2D renditions of muscles and organs. How the company pushes these boundaries, however, had been more subtext than headline, an issue Siemens vice president of marketing for MR Don Fowler set out to resolve on the ISMRM exhibit floor.

Noncontrast, flow-dependent FIESTA offers a safe and effective alternative to gadolinium-enhanced MR angiography for renal artery evaluations, according to a study from Japan presented on Thursday.

The first three months after standard radiation therapy for a brain tumor must be hell for patients and their families. The established MacDonald criteria for assessing treatment force them to wait up to 10 weeks for follow-up CT or MR to determine if the size of the treated tumor has changed.

Diagnostic power and field strength go hand in hand when it comes to evaluating multiple sclerosis.

An Italian study involving 238 women has confirmed the value of MR mammography as a presurgical planning tool for appreciating the full extent of cancer in dense breasts.

A University of Maryland study suggests that diffusion tensor imaging may provide emergency room physicians with valuable information to assess the extent of injuries to the cervical spine.

Studies described during a scientific session at the ISMRM on Wednesday showed that diagnostic power and field strength go hand in hand when it comes to evaluating multiple sclerosis.

New MR spectroscopy findings indicate that changes in brain glutamate levels reflect changes in heroin craving among addicts during methadone maintenance therapy. MRS may eventually help predict if addicts will relapse after treatment.

Quality Electrodynamics has constructed and tested a 32-channel cardiac array for use on the Toshiba 1.5T Vantage Atlas that its developers say will provide acceleration factors in any direction, including oblique phase-encoding, which is often applied in cardiac imaging.

A comprehensive evaluation of Magnevist use among the 3.3 million members of Kaiser Permanente in Northern California has found a lower risk for developing nephrogenic systemic fibrosis than reported in previous studies in renal disease patients who received gadolinium-based MR contrast media.

Quantitative MR, characterized by the precise measurement of data points that underlie MR images, may one day provide an exact and definable basis to recognize the early signs of disease and response to therapy. Philips Healthcare is moving toward that day, developing techniques that quantify the presence of cancerous tumors and heart disease.

A clinical trial presented Monday demonstrated how complicated the quantification of dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI of suspected prostate cancer can be.

Assessment with MR is essential for the early detection of rheumatoid arthritis in the hands and the monitoring of drug therapy, but hand studies are not cost effective. That’s where the Japanese firm MR Technology of Tsukuba, in the prefecture of Ibaraki, comes in.

GE Healthcare’s gas-based MRI imaging strategy may find a home, if tests of the technology by Merck pan out. The pharmaceutical company plans to audition GE’s Spin Signal Technology (SST) utilizing hyperpolarized xenon 129 gas for use in assessing its experimental respiratory treatments.

A clinical trial presented Monday demonstrated how complicated the quantification of dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI of suspected prostate cancer can be.

MR elastography debuted on Tuesday as a clinical application ready for diagnostic uses in the liver and many diagnostic niches elsewhere in the body.

Radiologists can anticipate access to more web-based educational programming from the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and a more intense international flavor in the society’s future work.

Medrad unveiled an educational program at the ISMRM meeting designed to teach the operators of GE Signa scanners how to perform prostate MR with its eCoil Endorectal Coil.

GE has unveiled a new 3T scanner, the Signa MR750, the first in a new generation of Signa scanners designed to handle the toughest imaging cases with minimal effort. More powerful gradients, increased anatomical coverage, enhanced parallel imaging, and a user interface that simplifies routine as well as academically challenging protocols promise to allow 3T to reach its clinical potential, said Jim Davis, GE vice president and general manager of global MR business.

Radiologists can anticipate access to more web-based educational programming from the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and a more intense international flavor in the society's future work.

Siemens Healthcare is focusing on its 3T Verio and 1.5T Essenza at the ISMRM meeting. Both were unveiled last year at the RSNA meeting.

Visitors to the 2008 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine meeting in Toronto need only wait a minute for the door to swing from clinical issues to advanced research on functional and metabolic imaging.

Therapeutic treatment in the very early stages of multiple sclerosis can help patients reduce brain tissue loss and maintain function. Brain atrophy is a common symptom in the relapsing-remitting form of the disease.

A couple of days ago I was in the zone. Shawna’s surgical mask hid her face, but I knew she was smiling. My banter was enough to make her laugh out loud a few times, so much that she paused while laying out the stainless steel instruments that soon would be probing the all too deep pockets between my teeth and gums.

Preoperative failure to identify vessels that could be recanalized or used for graft anastomosis may result in unnecessary amputations

Results of the EPITHET trial indicate MRI perfusion-diffusion mismatch can add a crucial three extra hours for safe administration of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) to treat qualified acute stroke patients.

To the listener, jazz improvisation is an aural flight of fancy, borne aloft by a musician's on-the-spot skill and imagination. But functional MRI results show the brain actually follows a grounded process of activation and deactivation during these spontaneous musical riffs, according to researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University.