Dear MRI Insider,
This issue of the MRI Insider offers a look at how accelerated imaging techniques, preparing patients properly prior to their scans, and eliminating scanner downtime can help you increase throughput in cardiac MRI.
Dr. Scott Flamm, section head of cardiovascular imaging at the Cleveland Clinic, detailed ways that cardiac MR personnel can achieve appropriate patient outcomes while accomplishing more work in less time. Learn how to achieve these efficiencies in this edition's Insider Exclusive, available to you before our other AuntMinnie.com members.
In other top features, researchers trying to develop better tools for predicting who will develop Alzheimer's disease used MRI to detect bright areas in the brain that indicate small-vessel cerebrovascular disease. The technique could be used with PET scans of beta-amyloid levels to predict Alzheimer's, according to the study in JAMA Neurology.
In another study in the same journal, MR and PET images showed that vascular brain injury from conditions such as high blood pressure and stroke has a considerably greater influence on cognitive impairment among nondemented older people than beta-amyloid plaque deposits. The results also contradicted previous animal research suggesting a correlation between stroke and increased beta-amyloid deposition.
Also in this issue of the Insider, whole-body MRI detected more skeletal lesions on average than conventional imaging among pediatric patients, in a study from Missouri researchers. However, the modality was less able to find lung metastases in the same group of subjects.
And last but not least, a new study suggests that using CT or perfusion MR after the onset of ischemic stroke to identify patients who would benefit from mechanical clot removal does not improve patient selection for use of the technology. Identification of patients with a favorable penumbral pattern did not affect outcomes at 90 days, regardless of whether the patient had undergone the clot-removal procedure or received standard therapy.
Be sure to stay in touch with the MRI Digital Community on a daily basis, and in just two weeks, follow AuntMinnie.com as we cover news and research from the annual European Congress of Radiology in Vienna, beginning March 7.
