Dear MRI Insider,
Regular musical sessions and performances are good for the brain, it seems. MR researchers from the Beatles' home town of Liverpool in the northwest of England have shown that musicianship has a significant impact on the right hippocampal shape and subfield volumes. They also think knowledge of training-induced anatomical neuroplasticity can be applied to neurorehabilitation, or strategies to delay the onset of dementia.
The authors won an award at the European Congress of Radiology (ECR) for their study. Read more in our MRI Digital Community.
The Alliance for MRI has worked tirelessly in its bid to have MRI exempted from the European Union Directive on electromagnetic fields (EMF), but the future of the EMF Directive remains uncertain. Our regular columnist, Dr. Peter Rinck, has some strong words to say about the actions of politicians and bureaucrats on this topic. Get the story here.
It's now less than 100 days before the Summer Olympic Games begins in London, and MRI is going to be used extensively in the polyclinic. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 450 MR examinations were performed, including 59 on a single day. To read about the preparations of Dr. Phil O'Connor and his team, click here.
MRI is proving of great value when it comes to the reconstructed breast. Once you understand how the surgery is done and how to recognize complications related to surgery, you can interpret MR images better, according to Dr. Vandana Dialani of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Click here to learn more.
MR enterography is both sensitive and specific for the detection of Crohn's disease compared to endoscopy and histology, and should be used in place of other methods in young patients when it's feasible to do so, according to a study in the European Journal of Radiology. Find out more here.
Finally, MRI appears to be playing a growing role in image fusion. New research from Malaysia and the U.K. has evaluated the usefulness of combining SPECT and MR images in measuring gut motility. Click here for our report.
