DOH! -- Cool thinking outside the box
From the
Detroit News comes this story of a Doctor who was doing a lot of work with animals and had a flash of inspiration.
DMC doctor finds way to spot disease in infants
Before symptoms arise, machine intended for animals can scan babies' brains, detect problems.
A Detroit doctor -- using a machine first created to study monkeys and rodents -- is finding new ways to detect brain disease in infants months or years before symptoms surface.
Tucked in the basement of Detroit's Hutzel Hospital, a scanning device as big as a small refrigerator maps out chemicals in the brains of babies weighing as little as 2 pounds.
For years the process, called micro positron emissions tomography (PET), was used only on animals undergoing tests in research labs. A larger version of the scanner is used regularly on adults and children but is imprecise when used on infants.
But then an idea struck Dr. Harry Chugani, a neurologist who spent years conducting animal research at the University of California-Los Angeles.
"I said to myself, 'A monkey is about the same size as a newborn -- why don't I stick one of these machines in the nursery?'" said Chugani, now director of the PET Center at Children's Hospital of Michigan.
With $500,000 and approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Chugani managed to snag one of the scanners and is now running tests on newborns at Hutzel.
In doing so, Chugani and his team of doctors are able to pinpoint problems that can show the source of epileptic seizures or signs of cerebral palsy and other brain diseases.
"We can do a scan and try to see what's in store for them," said Chugani, who has sent about 30 infants, bundled up and strapped down, through the machine since it came to Hutzel late last year.
Heh... Monkey indeed. The problem here is one of resolution. The machine can only detect so many pixels over a defined space and if this fixed space has to accommodate a large person, a very tiny one will only intersect a few of the available pixels and the resulting image quality is poor.
Tomography is very cool. It is used in Geology (using earthquakes as the beam source). It can also be use with X-Rays to get an overall view of the structure (the standard CAT Scan) You can use Magnetic Fields spinning around the subject to get a handle on tissues (MRI).
PET is done with injectable tracers.
This
Wikipedia article describes the process very nicely.
This company had re-invented a medical PET scanner for use on small lab animals and its use for tiny people will be wonderful.
The fact that Doctor Chugani is now the director of the PET Center at Children's Hospital of Michigan shows that other people are listening.
Posted by DaveH at June 21, 2005 12:14 AM