Dear MRI Insider,
This edition of the Insider gives you an exclusive first look at a company in California developing technology to noninvasively diagnose and localize back pain with the help of MR spectroscopy.
Nocimed, based in Redwood City, currently is testing Nociscan, a software package designed to enhance standard MR images with an additional MR spectroscopy sequence and postprocessing to detect the chemical signatures of painful disks.
Nociscan originated with researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, who looked at disk pain and the changing chemistry of disks as they degenerate and become painful. They found that chemical biomarkers play a role in disk pain, and MR spectroscopy can help localize the problem. Read more by clicking here.
Also in this issue is a study from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston that found that even if a negative CT scan shows no injuries in the cervical spine after blunt trauma, MRI should be used to evaluate patients who are obtunded or unexaminable to avoid missed injuries.
Meanwhile, international editor Eric Barnes reports on new findings that indicate that whole-body MRI is an excellent way to work up newly diagnosed breast cancer patients. Researchers from India found that MRI led to a change in treatment in nearly half of patients, and it also found metastases in some patients before symptoms appeared
Finally, read how preoperative prostate MRI can help urologic surgeons during robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy (RALP) in treating prostate cancer. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles said the additional information provided by MRI can help compensate for a RALP shortfall and spare the neurovascular bundle, which controls erectile function and continence.
Be sure to stay in touch with the MRI Digital Community on a daily basis for the latest news and research. Also, feel free to drop me an e-mail with any topics you think deserve more attention.