Imaging News and Research

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Cerebrovascular mental stress reactivity is impaired in hypertension

Mental stress causes carotid artery dilation and increases brain blood flow. A series of ultrasound experiments, described in BioMed Central's open access journal Cardiovascular Ultrasound, also found that this dilatory reflex was absent in people with high blood pressure.

2 Jul 2009

New prostate cancer metastasis prediction method

Cancer experts at Johns Hopkins say a study tracking 774 prostate cancer patients for a median of eight years has shown that a three-way combination of measurements has the best chance yet of predicting disease metastasis.

1 Jul 2009

In South Florida, risk of unemployment would accompany health reform benefits

The Miami Herald reports that healthcare reform could acutely affect South Florida and provide both benefits and risks.

30 Jun 2009

Expanding quantum dot utility in cancer diagnosis and treatment

Quantum dots (QDs), nanoparticles that shine with extraordinary brightness when excited by light energy, have shown promise as new tools for detecting cancer at its earliest appearance, but concerns about potential toxicities have limited their clinical development. Researchers at the University of Buffalo may have found an answer to this limitation with their development of a new way to create QDs.

28 Jun 2009

Carbon nanotubes continue to show promise in battle against cancer

Carbon nanotubes, one of the original engineered nanomaterials, also may prove to be among the most versatile, as numerous teams of investigators continue to develop novel nanotube-based therapeutic and diagnostic tools. Over the past month, three new research papers have highlighted the potential of nanotubes as weapons against cancer.

28 Jun 2009

Harnessing nanoparticles to track cancer cell changes

The more dots there are, the more accurate a picture you get when you connect them. Cancer researchers adopting that philosophy have developed a new imaging technology that could give scientists the ability to simultaneously measure as many as 100 or more distinct features in or on a single cell. In a disease such as cancer, that capability would provide a much better picture of what is going on in individual tumor cells.

28 Jun 2009

Early detection of pancreatic cancer closer thanks to multifunctional nanoparticles

Pancreatic cancer has a devastatingly low survival rate (less than 5 percent after 5 years) because it is usually diagnosed at an advanced stage. The initial symptoms, such as pain, jaundice, or weight loss, often do not allow the disease to be caught early enough for surgery and chemotherapy to be effective.

28 Jun 2009

Computer-guided nanoparticle therapy destroys tumors

Gold nanoshells are among the most promising new nanoscale therapeutics being developed to kill tumors, acting as antennas that turn light energy into heat that cooks cancer to death. Now, a multi-institutional research team has shown that polymer-coated gold nanorods one-up their spherical counterparts, with a single dose completely destroying all tumors in a nonhuman animal model of human cancer.

28 Jun 2009

Business groups note faults in House Democrats' overhaul plan

House Democrats readying a health reform bill without a price tag or a budget analysis will hear from business interests today that their plan is irrevocably broken and that they need to start from scratch, CongressDaily reports.

25 Jun 2009

Brain classification reveals the right cerebellum as the best biomarker of dyslexia

Parts of the right hemisphere of the brains of people with dyslexia have been shown to differ from those of normal readers. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare the two groups, and were able to associate the neurological differences found with different language difficulties within the dyslexic group.

24 Jun 2009

New treatments for infertility could be in the pipeline

Scientists at the University of Otago have found in their research into the brain circuits which control human fertility, that instead of the usual synapses, fertility is controlled by a thousand or so special neurons, which are linked by long, branch-like dendrites and they believe their discovery could lead to the development of new treatments for infertility.

23 Jun 2009

New biomarker predicts brain tumor's response to cediranib therapy

A report in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, highlights a new biomarker that may be useful in identifying patients with recurrent glioblastoma, or brain tumors, who would respond better to anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy, specifically cediranib.

23 Jun 2009

Alterations in brain's white matter key to schizophrenia

Schizophrenia, a chronic and debilitating disorder marked in part by auditory hallucinations and paranoia, can strike in late adolescence or early adulthood at a time when people are ready to stand on their own two feet as fully independent adults.

23 Jun 2009

Breakthrough in MR-guided, non-invasive neurosurgery

The Magnetic Resonance Center of the University Children's Hospital Zurich has achieved a world first break through in MR-guided, non-invasive neurosurgery. Ten patients have been successfully treated by means of transcranial high-intensity focused ultrasound. This fully non-invasive procedure opens new horizons for neurosurgery and the treatment of different neurological brain disorders.

23 Jun 2009

Biomarker in urine for appendicitis

Appendicitis is the most common childhood surgical emergency, but the diagnosis can be challenging, especially in children, often leading to either unnecessary surgery in children without appendicitis, or a ruptured appendix and serious complications when the condition is missed.

23 Jun 2009

Obesity may reduce brain gray matter in postmenopausal women

Results from a small study of postmenopausal women suggest that obesity might relate to a reduced volume of gray matter in the brain. However, whether the results have relevance in a woman's day-to-day life is unclear.

18 Jun 2009

Neuroimaging shows how we recognize right and wrong

A recent neuroimaging study reveals that the ability to distinguish true from false in our daily lives involves two distinct processes. Previous research relied heavily on the premise that true and false statements are both processed in the left inferior frontal cortex.

17 Jun 2009

New diagnostic technique detects possible Alzheimer's biomarker in blood

A new diagnostic technique which may greatly simplify the detection of Alzheimer's disease has been discovered by researchers at McGill University and the affiliated Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital (JGH).

17 Jun 2009

Bio-friendly nanocrystals allow study of biomolecules one at a time

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have created bright, stable and bio-friendly nanocrystals that act as individual investigators of activity within a cell.

17 Jun 2009

People with autism better at problem-solving

Autistics are up to 40 percent faster at problem-solving than non-autistics, according to a new Université de Montréal and Harvard University study published in the journal Human Brain Mapping.

17 Jun 2009