A new 3-D CT scanning approach may improve treatment for the potentially life-threatening heart disorder ventricular tachycardia. Current ablation treatment for the disorder, which can develop following a heart attack, has a long-term success rate of only 50 to 60 percent.

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore spent two years testing and customizing software to come … read more »

A new imaging technique could guide melanoma surgery, minimizing the amount of tissue that’s cut away while ensuring that every bit of the tumor is removed.

Two researchers at Washington University in St. Louis combined forces to create images of exceptional three-dimensional clarity. Lihong Wang, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, developed photoacoustic tomography (PAT) imaging. Younan … read more »

Is it the economy? Fear of radiation? Loss of health insurance by potential patients? All of the above?

Whatever the cause or causes, this has not been a good year for the high-tech imaging business. The Diagnostic Imaging news service reports that CT and MR imaging volumes are flat or declining across the United States.

The article quotes Tom Cabot, vice president … read more »

Suddenly, nanoparticles are big. We’ve been inundated with imaging-related nanoparticle news in recent weeks. The latest breakthrough comes from Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, where researchers have demonstrated how iron oxide nanoparticles can deliver cancer-fighting antibodies to brain tumors while also enhancing tumor visibility via MRI.

The study, published online by the journal Cancer Research, describes the use of … 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 … read more »

Clinicians can often make good guesses as to whether stroke patients are suffering from ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke, but no combination of clinical factors is good enough for a definitive diagnosis in all patients. For that, you need imaging.

So conclude two researchers who undertook a systematic review of 19 prospective studies involving 6,438 patients. Shauna Runchey, MD, and Steven McGee, … read more »

Although fibroid patients usually must receive myomectomies before they can become pregnant, uterine fibroid embolizations could be safe alternatives, and they have the same rate of subsequent fertility.

In radRounds Radiology Network, Joao Martins Pisco, MD, an interventional radiologist from Lisbon, Spain, outlined the findings from his study. “These results are surprising,” he said, “because other studies have favored surgical myomectomy … read more »

A (human) interventional radiologist and a veterinary radiologist have developed alginate capsules that can transport bone marrow stem cells to a patient’s blood stream and aid in the treatment of peripheral arterial disease, and they can be seen and followed in X-rays.

Having tested their technique on animal models, they found that the X-ray-visible microbubbles made of seaweed better protect the stem cells … read more »

The FDA announced Tuesday the launch of an initiative to cut unneeded radiation exposure from three kinds of medical imaging procedures: computed tomography (CT), nuclear medicine studies, and flouroscopy. These three are the biggest contributors to total radiation exposure for Americans and use much higher radiation doses than other imaging procedures, such as standard X-rays, dental X-rays, and mammograms.

While CT, … read more »

Patients who have undergone treatment of intracranial aneurysms with Guglielmi detachable coils (GDC) need regular follow-up studies to confirm long-term occlusion of the aneurysm, because the coils can change shape, or the aneurysm can grow. … read more »