Tag Archives: magnetic resonance imaging

Prostate Cancer Now Detectable Using Imaging-Guided Biopsy, UCLA Study Shows

Groundbreaking research by a team of UCLA physicians and engineers demonstrates that prostate cancer — long identifiable only through painful, hit-or-miss biopsies — can be diagnosed far more easily and accurately using a new image-guided, targeted biopsy procedure.

Traditionally, prostate tumors have been found through so-called blind biopsies, in which tissue samples are taken systematically from the entire prostate in the hopes of locating a piece of tumor — a technique that dates back to the 1980s. But the cancer now appears detectable by direct sampling of tumor spots found using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, in combination with real-time ultrasound, the researchers say. (more…)

Read More

The Search for the Earliest Signs of Alzheimer’s

Berkeley Lab scientists help paint a more complicated picture of the devastating disease

For the past five years, volunteers from the City of Berkeley and surrounding areas have come to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to participate in an ongoing study that’s changing what scientists know about Alzheimer’s disease.

The volunteers, most over the age of 70, undergo what can best be described as a brain checkup. They’re asked to solve puzzles and memorize lists of words. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans image the structure of their brains in exquisite detail. Functional MRI scans allow scientists to watch portions of their brains light up as they form memories. And Positron emission tomography (PET) scans measure any accumulation of beta-amyloid, a destructive protein that’s a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. (more…)

Read More

Study Amplifies Understanding of Hearing in Baleen Whales

For decades, scientists have known that dolphins and other toothed whales have specialized fats associated with their jaws, which efficiently convey sound waves from the ocean to their ears. But until now, the hearing systems of their toothless grazing cousins, baleen whales, remained a mystery.

Unlike toothed whales, baleen whales do not have enlarged canals in their jaws where specialized fats sit. While toothed whales use echolocation to find prey, baleen whales generally graze on zooplankton, and so some scientists have speculated that baleen whales may not need such a sophisticated auditory system. But a new study by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), published April 10, 2012, in The Anatomical Record, has shown that some baleen whales also have fats leading to their ears. (more…)

Read More

Yale Research Offers New Way To See Inside Solids

Researchers at Yale University have developed a new way of seeing inside solid objects, including animal bones and tissues, potentially opening a vast array of dense materials to a new type of detailed internal inspection.

The technique, a novel kind of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), creates three-dimensional images of hard and soft solids based on signals emitted by their phosphorus content. (more…)

Read More

Researchers Make Living Model of Brain Tumor

*Researchers have created a living 3-D model of a brain tumor and its surrounding blood vessels. In experiments, the scientists report that iron-oxide nanoparticles carrying the agent tumstatin were taken by blood vessels, meaning they should block blood vessel growth. The living-tissue model could be used to test the effectiveness of nanoparticles in fighting other diseases. Results appear in Theranostics.*

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University scientists have created the first three-dimensional living tissue model, complete with surrounding blood vessels, to analyze the effectiveness of therapeutics to combat brain tumors. The 3-D model gives medical researchers more and better information than Petri dish tissue cultures.

The researchers created a glioma, or brain tumor, and the network of blood vessels that surrounds it. In a series of experiments, the team showed that iron-oxide nanoparticles ferrying the chemical tumstatin penetrated the blood vessels that sustain the tumor with oxygen and nutrients. The iron-oxide nanoparticles are important, because they are readily taken up by endothelial cells and can be tracked by magnetic resonance imaging. (more…)

Read More

At a Loss for Words

*Research into aphasia – the inability to speak or write well-formulated sentences and words – is strong at the UA. Researchers have received $2 million toward the study of the condition.*

The National Institutes of Health have awarded the University of Arizona’s Aphasia Research Project in the department of speech, language and hearing sciences a $2 million grant to research communication impairments in adults who have suffered brain injury.

Aphasia – the inability to speak or write well-formulated sentences and words – is a common result of a stroke or a traumatic brain injury such as the one suffered by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head earlier this year. The bullet damaged regions of the brain that are critical for language and control of the right side of the body. (more…)

Read More

Does Sex Matter? It May When Evaluating Mental Status

Adrianna Mendrek. Image credit : University of Montreal

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that differs between the sexes in terms of age at onset, symptomatology, response to medication, and structural brain abnormalities. Now, a new study from the Université de Montréal shows that there is gender difference between men and women’s mental ability – with women performing better than men. These findings, published recently in, Schizophrenia Research, have implications for the more than 300 000 affected Canadians. 

“We are the first to report sex differences in brain function of schizophrenics,” says Université de Montréal professor, Adrianna Mendrek a researcher at the Centre de Recherche Fernand-Seguin, Hospital Louis-H Lafontaine. “We chose to study a task involving mental rotation of a three dimensional image because in healthy men and women, this consistently elicits differences in terms of reaction time and performance accuracy.”  (more…)

Read More