Nanoparticles Promise Sharp New Imaging

A new nanoparticle technique could lead to imaging so precise it could show a single cell, according to the authors of a study published this week in the journal Nature Communications.

The technique uses magnetic nanoparticles as contrast agents. A pulsing magnetic field shakes the nanoparticles. A photoacoustic image is taken, and then image-processing techniques remove everything from the image except what’s vibrating.

Psychoacoustic imaging involves a pulse of laser light that slightly heats a cell, causing it to vibrate. That produces ultrasonic waves that can be detected through tissue. The researchers … read more »

Mammography screening has been shown to be less effective for women in their 40s than for older women. Mammograms just don’t seem to be as good at detecting tumors in women that age. That’s one reason for the controversial recommendation last year by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that women of that age not get routine mammograms.

But why is screening less effective? Is it because tumors tend to grow faster in younger women, meaning that by the time they would grow to a size detectable by mammography, they probably … read more »

Nanoparticle research described last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine could revolutionize breast-cancer treatment.

At the meeting, which was in Philadelphia, Xuanfeng Ding, MS, a graduate student at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, presented his research on multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) containing iron. Ding and his colleagues injected the MWCNTs into breast tumors in mice, tracking them with MRI (thanks to the iron), then exposing them to near-infrared laser light. The MWCNTs absorb the laser energy, turning it into heat. The laser-induced thermal … read more »

Women who undergo radiation therapy for cancer as children run a greatly increased risk that their own children will be stillborn or die shortly after birth, according to a report in the journal The Lancet.

John D. Boice Jr., ScD, and Lisa B. Signorello, ScD, both of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Maryland, and the Division of Epidemiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, led a team that gathered data from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS), covering people who were treated at 25 U.S. institutions and 1 Canadian … read more »

In this calendar, they take it all off—all the way down to the bone.

A German advertising agency promoting a new monitor to German radiologists came up with a maximum-exposure calendar. It features 12 full-body X-rays of women in sultry pinup poses.

Okay, before we go any further, we know what you want. Here they are, Miss January through Miss December.

The Local, an English-language Web site that covers news about Germany, reported that the idea came from the Düsseldorf-based advertising agency Butter. The Japanese computer display maker Eizo had developed a new … read more »

Once again, CT turns out to be a really handy—and versatile—technology. In the latest “who would have thought?” use, scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts modified CT software to test the health of coral in the Red Sea.

The investigators specifically looked at Diploastrea heliopora, a major Red Sea species. “These corals looked healthy,” said co-lead investigator Anne L. Cohen, PhD, a WHOI research specialist. However, “The CT scans reveal that these corals have actually been under chronic stress for the last 10 years, and that the rates … read more »

Mammography rates have plateaued in the United States, with almost 20 percent of women age 50 to 74 saying they have not received a mammogram within the past two years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC reports that for 2008 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), the overall, age-adjusted percentage of U.S. women age 50 to 74 who said they had received a mammogram within the previous two years was 81.1 percent, compared with 81.5 percent in 2006.

Among the groups with the … read more »

The nation’s leading lab in the use of PET for psychiatric studies, the Kreitchman PET Center in New York, has suspended its research after federal investigators found that it had repeatedly injected mental patients with impure drugs.

The New York Times reported Friday that the center, which is part of Columbia University, had used at least 10 batches of drugs that violated Food and Drug Administration regulations since 2007. Former employees told the Times that the center was under such pressure to produce studies that it cut corners by hiding impurities … read more »

New research in England aims to use cardiac angiography to take us a step closer to using the virtual autopsy as the postmortem standard.

The question of whether an invasive autopsy should be performed sometimes arrays the government or the medical community, which wants to know details about the cause of death, against members of the deceased’s family, who object on religious grounds or simply want their loved one to rest in peace. As a press release from the University of Leicester in England puts it, many families find the idea … read more »

Anyone who’s been around infants knows how quickly they change. Well, no wonder. It turns out, say researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, that infants and children compress a few millennia of  ape-to-human evolution into a few years of brain development.

The researchers, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, noticed this while looking into something entirely different: the long-term effects of premature birth on brain development. They published their findings online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

First author Jason Hill, an MD/PhD … read more »

Radiation from radio and TV signals, amplified by the metal parts of mattresses and box springs, may cause breast cancer and melanoma—especially on the left side—among people in Western countries, two Swedish researchers suggest.

The researchers are Örjan Hallberg, MSc, of Hallberg Independent Research and Olle Johansson, PhD, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

Their study, published in the journal Pathophysiology, seeks to explain several odd facts: In Western countries, breast cancer occurs more frequently on the left side (by about 8 percent) in both women and men. Melanoma also occurs … read more »

New federal-government data on Medicare patients’ chest and abdominal CT scans, MRI scans for lower back pain, and mammograms have stirred up scrutiny of some hospitals’ practices (as intended) as well as controversy, especially about so-called “double CT scans.”

The data could have big financial implications for health-care providers.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released information from more than 4,600 hospitals on its Hospital Compare Web site, which falls under the aegis of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

“This new update to CMS’s Hospital … read more »

Diffusion MRI beats CT for diagnosing acute ischemic stroke, according to a new guideline from the American Academy of Neurology published today in the journal Neurology.

CT is the de facto standard for stroke diagnosis. But newer MRI techniques, such as diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and perfusion-weighted imaging (PWI), are more accurate, the article said.

“While CT scans are currently the standard test used to diagnose stroke, the academy’s guideline found that MRI scans are better at detecting ischemic stroke damage compared to CT scans,” said lead guideline author Peter Schellinger, MD, of … read more »

Nearly 1 in 10 American adults younger than 65 underwent heart imaging that exposed them to radiation from 2005 through 2007, according to a new study involving more than 950,000 adults in five U.S. health-care markets.

Is this a problem? Frustratingly enough, we don’t know. As the study says, “The public health and clinical implications of radiation exposure from cardiac imaging are not easily determined.” It goes on to acknowledge: “Of course, radiation exposure from cardiac imaging procedures may be worth the risk for many patients.”

The study results appear online in … read more »