Dear MRI Insider,
A new study from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital confirms what many observers have seen for the past several years: MRI scans are shifting from the private-office setting to hospital outpatient imaging departments.
Led by Dr. David C. Levin, professor emeritus of radiology, the study attributes the trend in part to reimbursement cuts that have made private-office MRI considerably less economically viable.
The shift to increased hospital outpatient-based MRI utilization is financial bad news for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and third-party payors, which have to dole out more money for hospital reimbursement than for private offices. Read more about the study in this issue's Insider Exclusive.
In other news, Texas researchers have developed a knowledge-based segmentation technique that surpasses previous efforts to segment the brain accurately with MRI. The new approach should eventually lead to better identification of boundaries between tissues, the group believes.
Using various MRI techniques, researchers from Stanford University have pinpointed structural abnormalities in the brains of people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), which could potentially help in diagnosing the condition. An increase in fractional anisotropy in the right arcuate fasciculus in people with CFS corresponded with the severity of the condition.
Baseball may seem like a passive game, but it is causing a range of health issues in the young athletes who play it. MR images in another study from Thomas Jefferson University revealed abnormal shoulder development and potential long-term issues in male and female teenagers who threw a baseball more than 100 times a week.
Finally, with the help of arterial spin-labeled MRI, Swiss researchers found evidence of cognitive decline in the brains of healthy elderly individuals before symptoms appeared. Initial scans showed decreased cerebral blood flow in the posterior cingulate cortex region of the brain in approximately half of the healthy subjects in the study; this group later developed subtle cognitive decline.
Be sure to stay in touch with the MRI Community when AuntMinnie.com travels to Chicago for the 100th annual meeting of RSNA. Daily reports on the latest news and research begin Sunday, November 30.
