MRI Spectroscopy / Ezine
Tracking stem cells: Nanoparticle tags for MRI
Date: Mar 1, 2011
Author: David Bradley
Stem cells labelled with hollow biocompatible cobalt-platinum (CoPt) nanoparticles remain stable for months and have a strong tendency to align with a magnetic field. The discovery allows low concentrations of the particles to be detected using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and so might provide medical researchers with the means to locate and track stem cells in the body.
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What's love got to do with it: fMRI and the loving brain
Date: Feb 1, 2011
Author: David Bradley
When it's almost Valentine's Day, a researcher's mind turns to thoughts of love. A small functional magnetic resonance imaging has been used to investigate love. The study revealed brain activity in 10 women and 7 men when they looked at photos of their spouses to whom they had been married an average of 21 years. The results? Apparently, love lasts.
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Confine and contrast: Nanoporous nests offer relaxing home for contrast agent
Date: Jan 5, 2011
Author: David Bradley
Magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents are currently designed by modifying their structural and physiochemical properties to improve relaxivity and to enhance image contrast. A new approach based on porous, disk-shaped "nests" for nanotubes could offer a way to improve contrast by increasing relaxivity through the confinement of the contrast agent within nanoporous silicon.
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Compressed MRI: image manipulation scans lab-on-a-chip
Date: Dec 1, 2010
Author: David Bradley
Remote instrumentation and image compression allowed US chemists to utilise NMR/MRI to image materials flowing through a "lab-on-a-chip" device and to zoom in on microscopic objects of particular interest with unprecedented spatial and time resolution.
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Gigapixel software: 'zoom and enhance' for MRI
Date: Nov 1, 2010
Author: David Bradley
Computer scientists at the University of Utah have developed software that can generate rapid previews of super-high resolution images for medical, astronomical, and other applications. Images containing billions to hundreds of billions of pixels drain computer resources rapidly but a new technique for analysing the data could allow gigapixel MRI scans and other images to be previewed and manipulated much more easily than is currently possible.
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Implementation of spin-echo blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional MRI in birds
Date: Oct 28, 2010
Author:
This study shows that spin-echo functional MRI is a viable approach to investigate auditory processing in small songbirds. Its whole-brain coverage opens up new perspectives and should allow the investigation of regions beyond the primary and secondary auditory regions. Because of its relative acoustic quietness, the sequence used could also be relevant to the study of auditory processes in other small animals.
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Noble heat mapping - Xenon plays role in new MRI thermometry
Date: Oct 1, 2010
Author: David Bradley
Hyperpolarized xenon can be used as an MRI temperature sensor, according to researchers in Germany and the US. Their new approach to MRI thermometry uses encaged xenon atoms and enables unprecedented accuracy of 0.1 degrees Clsiu at low and ultralow sensor concentrations. The technique might be used in clinical diagnostics and therapy monitoring.
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Real-time MRI at a resolution of 20 ms
Date: Sep 28, 2010
Author:
In this paper, published in NMR in Biomedicine, the authors describe a unique method for real-time MRI that reduces image acquisition times to only 20 ms.
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Dollar signs switch on brain
Date: Sep 1, 2010
Author: David Bradley
Functional magnetic resonance imaging has revealed a region of the brain about two inches above the left eyebrow that lights up whenever a person anticipating a reward for a task performed successfully is shown a dollar sign. The response is linked to dopamine release in response to pre-determined cues of which a symbol for money is one.
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Quantification of human body fat tissue percentage by MRI
Date: Aug 18, 2010
Author:
In this paper, a novel comprehensive and automatic analysis method for the determination and quantification of subcutaneous fat tissue and visceral fat tissue volumes either in the whole human body or in selected slices or regions of interest is shown.
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