Imaging tech

The National Cancer Institute isn't changing one of its key messages: don't smoke--it'll kill you.

But the mortality data from its ongoing National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) involving more than 53,000 current and former heavy smokers ages 55 to 74 is so striking that the institute announced initial findings today, ahead of a more comprehensive report.

What the trial shows is that there have been 20 percent fewer deaths from lung cancer among trial participants who receive an annual low-dose CT scan than those who receive an annual standard chest X-ray.

While CT scans are already considered valuable … Read more

This week, at Cleveland Clinic's 2010 Medical Innovation Summit, the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2011 have been predicted, with the new brain imaging compound AV-45--which is poised to help early detection of Alzheimer's--taking the top spot.

Alzheimer's gets its name from German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer, who began lecturing in the early 1900s about the plaques and tangles he'd found in the post-mortem brain tissue of a 51-year-old patient.

To this day, diagnosing the disease while a patient is still alive is tricky, and there is still no cure. But there have been several breakthroughs … Read more

3D is finally getting some love in the health segment--specifically the love handle segment. A 3D body scanner in development for 10 years and out this month from U.K. company Select Research, can not only tell how obese you are in relation to what's recommended, but exactly where those numerous high-tea buffets have distributed themselves. Ouch.

Say hello to BVI, or body volume index, and goodbye to BMI, or body mass index, which uses a standard international formula to calculate body weight.

The more detailed BVI system is a 7-foot-tall booth that scans a patient, stripped down to his or her undergarments, using 16 sensors and 32 cameras. In a whopping six seconds, more than 200 linear data measurements of the patient's body are gathered and sent to a secure server to be accessed and analyzed by authorized doctors. An exact "virtual" image of a person's shape is also created. The BVI scanner uses white light but no radiation. … Read more

As National Breast Cancer Awareness month comes to a close, a professor at Manchester University is bringing hope to women (and men) worldwide with his new invention--a portable real-time breast scanner.

Zhipeng Wu has invented a scanner in the shape of a cup to fit over a bra, and uses radio frequency to find differences in tissue instead of measuring density, as mammography does.

The patented scanner still needs to undergo rigorous testing, but looks at this point to be both safe and inexpensive (compared to existing systems), and it can fit in a case the size of a lunch … Read more

When it comes to measuring oxygen levels in the brain to chart neurological activity--a technique called functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)--things can get a little hairy. Literally. As in, the patient's hair gets in the way.

So researchers at the University of Texas have engineered a novel device, which they call a "brush optrode" (variant of word optode), whose fiber tips thread past hair to increase scalp contact, thereby improving signal levels as well as overall cost and efficiency of the optical scanning technique. They will present their findings at the Optical Society's 94th annual … Read more

It sounds counterintuitive--that light, so often considered the culprit in skin cancer, might also play a role in its treatment. But researchers at the University of California at Irvine are using light-emitting diodes to improve a cancer therapy that they hope to use to treat skin cancer.

The technique is called photodynamic therapy (PDT), and is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat both esophageal and lung cancer. Light-absorbing chemicals are injected into tumors and then exposed to light, which prompts the chemicals to generate oxygen radicals that destroy cancer cells.

The technique has the potential to treat … Read more

No major structural differences between the brains of people with autism and those without it have been identified, with the exception of brain volume and head circumference in children. So the bulk of neurological research on the disorder focuses on how various regions of the brain communicate with one another.

Now, in a study published in October in the journal Cerebral Cortex, researchers at the University of Utah say they are one step closer to using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to diagnose autism.

"This work adds an important piece of information to the autism puzzle," says principal investigator … Read more

It all started more than 25 years ago, when James C. Tilton, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, began investigating a novel way to analyze the pixels that comprise digital images.

He devised an algorithm that took image segmentation (grouping pixels at different levels of detail) to a whole new level; he not only found regional objects, but also grouped spatially separate objects into region classes. In other words, applied to a satellite image, it could not only identify and separate lakes of varying depths, but could recognize lakes as a class of objects spatially distinguishable from, say, trees.

He calls this Recursive Hierarchical Segmentation, and it has been used to analyze Earth-imaging data from NASA's Landsat and Terra spacecraft to improve snow and ice maps, find potential locations for archeological digs, etc. It is now being applied to medical imaging to improve mammograms, ultrasounds, digital x-rays, and more.

"My original concept was geared to Earth science," says Tilton, who was at first skeptical that his algorithm could enhance, say, mammography. "I never thought it would be used for medical imaging."

Then he processed cell images and saw details not visible in unprocessed displays of those images. "The cell features stood out real clearly, and this made me realize that Bartron was onto to something."

Bartron Medical Imaging, based out of Connecticut, has since developed the new MED-SEG system, which the FDA recently cleared for use by trained professionals to process images alongside other images, though stipulated that the system should not (at least yet) be used for primary image diagnosis.

Bartron, which first studied the software through Goddard's Innovative Partnerships Program Office, licensed the patented technology in 2003 to create a system that would differentiate hard-to-see medical image details. It then began to work with doctors to analyze CT scans, MRIs, ultrasounds, etc.… Read more

How'd you like to check your pulse, respiration, and blood pressure as you brush your teeth in the mirror each morning? A PhD candidate at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology is working to make this a reality in the near future.

Electrical and medical engineering student Ming-Zher Poh has already used low-res Webcam imaging to measure the human pulse. He's now working on adding respiration, blood oxygen levels, and blood pressure to the list--all by having people simply peer into a camera or, for those who'd rather multitask, into a mirror in front of that camera.

The system works by measuring the slightest variations in brightness produced by blood flow through blood vessels in the face. Poh used public-domain software to identify facial positions in any given image and break that information into separate red, green, and blue portions of the video images.

To deal with both movement in front of the lens as well as different ambient light, Poh adapted a method known as ICA (Independent Component Analysis)--a signal-processing technique originally developed to extract a single voice from a room of conversations--to find the pulse signal amid all the video noise.

Initial results of the project, which Poh conducted with Media Arts and Sciences Professor Rosalind Picard and Media Lab student Daniel McDuff, were outlined in May in the journal Optics Express.

The pulse results turned out to be pretty reliable when compared with measurements taken by an FDA-approved monitoring device.… Read more