MR elastography is now available for clinical use. This technique is based on the fact that diseased liver tissue has different stiffness than healthy tissue (paper published in Science in 1995 by Ehman et al). MR elastography thumps the liver at the end of a routine MR exam with mechanical vibrations that compress the organ, changing the MR signal to indicate the elasticity of tissue. Stiff tissue shows up as red on the MR images. Soft, healthy tissue appears purple. More information can be found at http://www.diagnosticimaging.com/mri/content/article/113619/1549667
Reading CCTA in your iPhone/iPad…
April 6, 2010
A multi-institutional research team found that the app yielded 100% sensitivity, 78% specificity, and 100% negative predictive value in predicting stenosis greater than 50%, comparable to previous multicenter studies employing 3D workstation software. The group also found that heart rate and heart rate variability were the factors most likely to affect diagnostic performance of the technique. Want to know more? Read the following article: http://www.auntminnie.com/index.asp?Sec=sup&Sub=car&Pag=dis&ItemId=90081&wf=3663
Pediatric MRI without sedation
April 3, 2010
Clinicians at the VU Medical Center in Amsterdam have recently published an article in the European Journal of Pediatrics, where they describe how they managed to scan 90 children (aged 3 to 14 years old) without sedation: they performed a mock MR scan. Each child and his/her parents were taken into a decommisioned MRI scanner and were explained the purposed of the exam and the procedure, including listening to recordings of the sounds an MR exam makes. A real exam was performed afterwards with a high success rate.
Although labor intensive and time consuming, those are good news for researchers focused on pediatric MRI.
More information can be found in the article published online March 13 in the European Journal of Pediatrics
