New Breast Cancer Detection Shows Promise Sep 4, 2008
Radioactive Tracer "Lights Up" Cancer Hiding Inside Dense Breasts ... (AP) A radioactive tracer that "lights up" cancer hiding inside dense breasts showed promise in its first big test against mammograms, revealing more tumors and giving fewer false alarms, doctors reported Wednesday ... Radioactive Tracer "Lights Up" Cancer Hiding Inside Dense Breasts. (CBS News)
Breast Cancer 'Lights Up' In New Test Sep 4, 2008
Doctors said a radioactive tracer that "lights up" cancer hiding inside dense breasts is showing promise after its first big test. In a comparison with mammograms, molecular breast imaging -- or MBI -- found 10 out of 13 tumors, missing three. (KSBW 8, CA)
Judge blocks welfare cuts Sep 4, 2008
A radioactive tracer that "lights up" cancer hiding inside dense breasts showed promise in its first big test against mammograms, revealing more tumors and giving fewer false alarms, doctors reported Wednesday. A 3 a.m. fight Saturday in Cass Lake resulted in two men shot and six suspects arrested. (Yahoo News -- Welfare Reform)
Athlerosclorosis and Heart Health - Sponsored by Crestor - How New Heart-Scanning Technology Could Save Your Life - TIME.com Jul 24, 2008
5 million echocardiograms, which use sound waves to produce pictures of the internal structures of the heart, and more than 9 million nuclear perfusion scans, which use mildly radioactive tracer molecules to measure how well the cardiac muscle is nourished. Improvements in computer processing power and software have made these tests more reliable and more conclusive than ever before. (Time.com)
3D Mammograms Help Breast Exams Jul 2, 2008
Doctors inject women with a drug known as a radioactive tracer, one cardiologists have used in heart stress tests for years. It tends to briefly collect in breast tumors, lighting up for viewing when Mayo switches on a small gamma camera. (Time.com)
High-Tech Imaging No Better for Diagnosing Head/Neck Cancers May 15, 2008
Positron emission tomography with a radioactive tracer (18F-FDG PET) is one of three imaging techniques commonly used to check whether head and neck squamous cell cancer has spread to the nearby lymph nodes in such patients. This is important in determining the prognosis of the disease, since some patients who clinically appear free of these types of metastases may actually have small tumors within their lymph nodes. (MEDLINEplus)
Breast Cancer Lymph Node Biopsy May Need Closer Look Apr 9, 2008
In sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy, a patient's tumor is injected with a combination of dye and radioactive tracer molecules. The following day, only those lymph nodes to which the tracer molecules migrated (the SLNs) are biopsied and analyzed. (Health-Finder)
Breakdown Of Kidney's Ability To Clean Its Own Filters Likely Causes Disease Feb 4, 2008
To do this, they measured the retention of a radioactive tracer in the kidneys of normal mice and in mice where the gene for FcRn had been disabled. Mice lacking FcRn had difficulty clearing antibody from the kidney. (Science Daily)
Heart Tests Offer New Options For Diagnosis Jan 15, 2008
Other imaging technology includes MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), which utlizies a powerful magnet instead of radiation; and nuclear medicine, which involves injecting radioactive tracer molecules to measure blood flow. While these imaging options are not new, the level of precision and detail has improved dramatically. (Science Daily)
KDMC obtains state-of-the-art camera Jan 4, 2008
"But because of the wide range of breast tissue density, tumors, cysts and other abnormalities can be hidden by dense tissue, scar tissue or breast implants. This makes the sensitivity of a mammography approximately 81 percent. "In other words, one in five abnormalities may go undiscovered, even in the hands of the most skilled and experienced mammographers and radiologists," he said. Kirchbaum added that mammography has a "less-than-perfect" specificity, which means that determining the... (Brookhaven Daily Leader, MS)
CT Scans Catch More Clots in Lungs Dec 20, 2007
The test requires an injection of a radioactive tracer and the inhalation of radioactive gas. CTPA has been around for about 10 years and also involves using an injected radioactive tracer but doesn't require the inhalation portion included in V/Q scans. (MEDLINEplus)
Searching For The Brain Center Responsible For Tinnitus Oct 10, 2007
In another study phase, the researchers will assess neural activity throughout the entire brain using a radioactive tracer, fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), which is taken up preferentially into regions of the brain that are highly active metabolically. The third phase of the study involves the use of potential therapeutic drugs to suppress salicylate- or noise-induced tinnitus. (Science Daily)
Toxin in brain is dementia warning Jun 24, 2007
A radioactive tracer was injected through a vein in the arm, flowed through the brain and stuck to the amyloid, Associate Professor Rowe, of Melbourne's Austin Hospital, said. A scan of the patient's head showed whether amyloid was present in the brain. (Sydney Morning Herald -- Australia)
Plans for anemia drug run into roadblocks Apr 9, 2007
9 million from medical imaging division for Cardiolite, a heart stress test invented by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that uses a radioactive tracer to identify damaged tissue. But some payoffs can be even higher. (Boston Globe)
Slim access to PET scans in Ontario a 'disgrace' Jan 21, 2007
The scan costs roughly $2,500 in Ontario and $1,250 in Alberta, the difference in price being due largely to Alberta's proximity to the short-lived radioactive tracer isotope that is mixed with a sugar called fluorodeoxyglucose. The closer the source, the cheaper the cost. (Globe and Mail)
New Hybrid Imaging System Allows Pinpoint Locating Of Problems Jan 10, 2007
During a SPECT/CT scan, a radioactive tracer is administered to the patient. When the radioactive isotope decays, it emits gamma rays that are then processed by the gamma camera. (Science Daily)
New Tool To Diagnose Alzheimer's Dec 22, 2006
Positron emission tomography (PET) is an imaging technique that combines a radioactive tracer with a molecule. The combination is injected into the body, and as the molecule collects in certain tissues of the body, the tracer shows up on a scanning device. (CBS News)
Patients wait as PET scans used in animal experiments Nov 23, 2006
It works by injecting patients with a short-lived radioactive tracer isotope that has been mixed with a sugar called fluorodeoxyglucose. Cancer absorbs the glucose more readily than healthy tissue, causing it to light up on a scan. (Globe and Mail)
Dopamine plays role in pain, researchers find Oct 21, 2006
Each patient was treated with a short-lived radioactive tracer combined with a drug that binds to the same receptors in brain cells that dopamine does. The more that images showed the tracer, the less dopamine was present in a brain region, and vice versa. (Herald Online, SC -- Health)
Chemo Effects Can Linger in Brain for a Decade Oct 6, 2006
Positron emission tomography creates an image of sections of the body using a special camera that follows the progress of an injected radioactive tracer. Continued. (ABC News)
Chemotherapy 'affects memory' Oct 5, 2006
The scans create an image of sections of the body using a camera that follows the progress of an injected radioactive tracer. They also compared the scans with those of 13 women who had not had breast cancer or chemotherapy. (Aljazeera.Net)
Clue to a natural high? Sep 5, 2006
They used a brain scan with a radioactive tracer to visualize the dopamine-2 receptor system. Each person in the study also filled out a personality questionnaire to determine whether they are introverts or extroverts. (Newsday -- Health)
PET Scan IDs Breast Cancer Spread Aug 24, 2006
The technique involves injecting a woman with a glucose-like radioactive tracer called FDG for imaging. Cancer cells grow very fast, and need more food -- glucose -- than normal cells. (WebMD)
Trace of Alzheimer's Jun 15, 2006
A new radioactive tracer may one day be used to predict whether a person might develop Alzheimer's disease ... Radioactive tracers for beta amyloid plaques exist, but they do not fully distinguish healthy from diseased tissue, says Gary Small, a geriatric psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles. (Scientific American)
UPMC tests combined imaging method in diagnosing heart problems Jun 14, 2006
Combining the test with SPECT, which involves injecting a radioactive tracer in the blood, then taking scans of the heart, could indicate whether an apparent blockage actually creates a problem. SPECT-CT "would allow us to get a complete evaluation of heart structure and physiology," he said. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PA)
HealthWatch: Breast-Imaging Device Shows Promise May 5, 2006
This new device uses a radioactive tracer to detect the rapid movement of abnormal cells within breast tissue, which can be an early sign of cancer. "The key in treatment of breast cancer is to make the diagnosis as early as possible," Feldman said. (CBS New York, NY)
State OK's medical scanners, renews cost debate Apr 19, 2006
A PET (positron emission tomography) machine shows the metabolic action of cells, by imaging how fast glucose linked to a radioactive tracer is absorbed by cells. Cancer cells metabolize the glucose faster. (Boston Globe -- Business)
Mental stress effects on heart more common than previously known Mar 8, 2006
But a minute into the speech, a radioactive tracer was injected into the patients. On the images then produced of blood flow in the heart muscle, six of the 29 patients showed signs of ischemia. (EurekAlert!)
