Dear Molecular Imaging Insider,
The 103rd annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) is history, but not before a multitude of research was presented from all points around the world, much of it dealing with molecular imaging.
Among the highlights was a study by German researchers who are using PET/MRI to better detect and classify local lesions and distant metastases in women suspected of having recurrent pelvic cancer. They found that the hybrid modality outperformed MRI alone and should help clinicians choose the best path of follow-up treatment for each individual patient.
Read more about this cutting-edge study in this edition's Insider Exclusive.
Also at RSNA 2017 were researchers from Spain, who are using PET/CT and MRI to predict which lesions could progress to malignant neurofibromas. They found several key indicators that can help radiologists differentiate between benign and malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors in patients with and without neurofibromatosis.
In addition, Canadian researchers believe they have overcome the challenge of attenuation correction in PET/MRI to ensure diagnostic image quality in brain scans of patients with medically refractory epilepsy. Their solution is an attenuation correction method that collects data on different tissue types from MRI scans through segmentation and assigns equivalent CT linear attenuation coefficients to generate maps.
In other news in the Molecular Imaging Community, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and the University of Arizona Health Sciences are utilizing PET scans to determine if a woman's menopausal status may be the reason why they are more frequently afflicted with Alzheimer's disease than men.
Finally, the advance of technology can certainly be seen with the continuing influence of low-cost 3D printing. A group of German researchers is using a 3D-printed kidney phantom to provide shape-specific details that improve the quantification of SPECT/CT scans.
The entire staff at AuntMinnie.com would like to thank all of our readers for their support throughout 2017. We also wish everyone a happy holiday season and a very prosperous and healthy 2018!
