Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh have used diffusion-tensor MRI (DTI-MRI) to identify parts of the brain that might be causing dizziness and vision problems in people with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI).
In a new study we're highlighting this week in our MRI Digital Community, the research team performed DTI-MRI on patients with TBI and vestibulopathy, a debilitating condition that includes dizziness and eye problems.
It had been thought that vestibulopathy was caused by damage to the inner ear following trauma, but DTI-MRI revealed that the condition was actually a sign of damage to brain tissue. Learn more by clicking here, or visit the community at mri.auntminnie.com.
PET/CT for head and neck cancer
Meanwhile, in the world of molecular imaging, Japanese researchers have discovered that qualitative measures of FDG uptake could be just as good as quantitative ones for predicting survival in patients with head and neck cancer.
The researchers found that if patients had a ring-shaped area of FDG uptake, they most likely had lower survival prospects than those with sphere-shaped areas. This qualitative measure was more accurate than quantitative parameters such as maximum standardized uptake value, metabolic tumor volume, and total lesion glycolysis.
Learn more by clicking here, or visit the Molecular Imaging Digital Community at molecular.auntminnie.com.
New FDA IT regulations
Finally, visit our Healthcare IT Digital Community for a review of the imaging industry's response to the new proposed regulatory framework for medical software.
A group of U.S. regulatory agencies has proposed a three-tiered framework for software regulation that would have the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) focus on software with higher risk profiles, while lower-risk applications would be regulated through other channels.
The new framework doesn't offer a radically new approach compared to what's being done now, but it did meet with generally positive reviews from the industry veterans we contacted. Learn more by clicking here, or visit the community at healthcareit.auntminnie.com.
