Medical Engineering

Research could revolutionize care of transplant patients

Carnegie Mellon University scientist Chien Ho and his colleagues have developed a promising tool that uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to track immune cells as they infiltrate a transplanted heart in the early stages of organ rejection. This pre-clinical advance, described in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), ultimately could provide a non-invasive way to detect transplan

Researchers at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix have developed a new method that allows technicians to obtain clearer Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans with less sensitivity to patient motion.

PROPELLER is an acronym for “Periodically Rotated Overlapping ParallEL Lines with Enhanced Reconstruction.” This method acquires data in a unique way that allows one to track the motion of the patient during the MRI scan. The motion can then be removed.

“While PR

A revolutionary portable brain scanner under development could aid the treatment, and in some cases help save the lives, of premature and newborn babies in intensive care.

By providing vital information about brain function at the cot side, the scanner avoids the need to move critically ill babies to conventional scanning facilities, which may involve sedating them and has a degree of risk. The data produced by the new scanner can be used to diagnose and assess conditions such a

Dutch otolaryngologist Marein van der Torn hoped to develop a prosthesis that would improve the voice of people who had lost their vocal cords. He investigated the possibilities of a new type of voice prosthesis that produces vocal sound. The concept could be useful for female patients with a very weak voice: it would strengthen their voice and enable it to achieve a female pitch again. However, various practical problems need to be solved before the voice prosthesis can be used.

Sometim

A collaboration between scientists at UCLA, Caltech, Stanford, Siemens and Fluidigm have developed a new technology using integrated microfluidics chips for simplifying, lowering the cost and diversifying the types of molecules used to image the biology of disease with the medical imaging technology, Positron Emission Tomography (PET). These molecules are used with PET to diagnostically search throughout the body to look for (image) the molecular errors of disease and to guide the development of

“4D ecography may well be a significant advance in the prenatal diagnosis of congenital cardiopathy”, explained Dr. Juan Luis Alcázar, specialist at the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department of the University Hospital (University of Navarre).

One of the most recent novelties in ecographic studies has been the application of a fourth dimension, i.e. movement added to three-dimensional reconstruction. According to Dr. Alcázar, “the development of the STIC system, carrying out the