Medical Central: Combining Stuff!

Read more on Medical Imaging today. We covered something interesting... combining the multiple Medical Imaging ways!

Combining Stuff
We've covered a lot of ways that are used in Medical Imaging. PET, CT, MRI... to name a few. Each of these have really good points... but some have very bad points. PET and CT use radiation, which can be dangerous in over-dosages, and can't ever be used on a pregnant woman. Endoscopes and Ultrasound have different image-quality, image area size, and expense cost for these images. And each of these can see different things... one sees how the body uses stuff, but not structure... another sees this structure... and yet another actually sees these things, not just scan and construct the image! And MRI can cause clastrophobia (sp?), AKA a fear of small and enclosed places. While ways have been made to try and fix these (like an "open" MRI to ease up the clastrophobia [sp?]), there are still some problems to go with the ups.
Scientists, of course, have figured out something cooking figured out ages ago... combining things can make a one big good thing! They have started combining different Medical Imaging ways to see things better and differently. One way is in brain imaging, where PET has been combined with a different scanning technique to see how the brain works... by both seeing structure and how the body uses its systems. While the brain-imaging is mainly used in research, it has been used to figure out some abnormal brain activity for some patients with brain-problems (increasingly, according to the book).
Combining PET with CT helps pick up how well drugs are working. Scientists had been using PET to check for drug-effects on animals for a while, but now are using a combo in order to check on how some drugs effect humans. Take Alheizmer's (sp?) disease, which affects the brain especially in later years. It causes clogging of a substance called alyhmoid (sp?). Scientists have figured out that a certain substance that can be radioactively tagged sticks onto alyhmoid. They use this tagged substance to check to see how certain drugs effect the disease.
Combining Medical Imaging ways have some problems. The brain imaging mentioned above, for example, can't keep up with the constantly changing signals in the brain. The brain can change signals in milliseconds... talk about fast! But that's too fast for a machine to keep up sometimes. But scientists are even figuring out these problems, since combing Medical Imaging ways are great in research and diagnosing problems (according to the book). They combined a method called EEGs (which uses electrodes [electricity conductors] to see how signals work in the brain and keep up with them in the brain according to the book) and MEGs (which does same thing as EEGs, just with magnetism, according to the book) with a different scanning method. Using this, they can keep track of the brain's signals, and see which parts of the brain are active certain things are being done!
But that's just an example... combining different things and Medical Imaging ways even helps keep an eye on structure while seeing which parts of the brain are active or not! That's just plain cool! And that's just for the brain... there are many possiblities (sp?) for combining Medical Imaging ways, and how they help people and doctors (combining Medical Imaging ways can help spot tumors as early as possible too)! And more research is being made too!