In a bold, eye-opening editorial in the March 2010 issue of the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine, Harvard Professor, Beryl Benacerraf, MD, urges the medical community to use ultrasound instead of Computed Tomography (CT) as the first-line imaging test for better diagnosis capability in the evaluation of acute female pelvic and lower abdominal conditions.

An imaging technique combining ultrasound and specially modified contrast agents may allow researchers to noninvasively detect cancer and show its progression, according to research published in the March issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM). The technique enables researchers to visualize tumor activity at the molecular level.

Knowing the stage of a patient's melanoma is important when choosing the best course of treatment. When the cancer has progressed to the lymph nodes, a more aggressive treatment is needed. Examining an entire lymph node for cancer takes much effort and time. Now, a new technique might help make the process more efficient.

Duke University Medical Center scientists crowded around a laser-powered microscope in a darkened room to peer into the brain of an anesthetized juvenile songbird right after he heard an adult tutors' song for the first time. Specifically, they wanted to see what happened to the connections between nerve cells, or synapses, in a part of the brain where the motor commands for song are thought to originate.

Contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may help physicians differentiate between rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis in the hand and wrist enabling more targeted therapies unique to each condition, according to a study in the March issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology. Contrast-enhanced MRI uses contrast media to improve the visibility of internal bodily structures.

When one diagnoses a cancer patient, it's important to gather as much information about that person as possible. But who would have thought an accurate diagnosis would depend on throwing some of that information away? That's key to the technique employed by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center as they bolster the efficiency of scanners that find and track lung and thoracic tumors.

Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the British Heart Foundation at the University of Oxford have developed a revolutionary way of capturing a high-resolution still image alongside very high-speed video a new technology that is attractive for science, industry and consumer sectors alike.

Cellular imaging offers a wealth of data about how cells respond to stimuli, but harnessing this technique to study biological systems is a daunting challenge. In a study published online in Genome Research, researchers have developed a novel method of interpreting data from single-cell images to identify genetic interactions within biological networks, offering a glimpse into the future of high-throughput cell imaging analysis.

Scientists have determined that a new instrument known as PIB-PET is effective in detecting deposits of amyloid-beta protein plaques in the brains of living people, and that these deposits are predictive of who will develop Alzheimer's disease.