We present the first reported case of acute “wiiitis”, documented clinically and by imaging, of the upper extremity, caused by prolonged participation in a physically interactive virtual video-game. Unenhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) demonstrated marked T2-weighted signal abnormality within several muscles of the shoulder and upper arm, without evidence of macroscopic partial- or full-thickness tearing of the muscle or of intramuscular hematoma.

Nett MP, Collins MS, Sperling JW. Skeletal Radiol. 2008 May;37(5):481-3. PMID 18259743.

It was really just a matter of time… the floodgates are now open. I expect that the musculoskeletal specialists are eagerly anticipating the release of the Wii Fit

Also, incidentally, upgrading to Wordpress 2.2 kind of hosed our K2 theme install, so we are looking a bit retro until I can fix that.

Physicist Paul C. Lauterbur, who received a 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for giving physicians the ability to look inside the human body without using harmful radiation, died Tuesday at his home in Urbana, Ill.

He was 77 and had been suffering from kidney disease.

Before the ink was dry on the government’s 2007 budget (or even completed for that matter), the Bush administration’s proposal for the 2008 budget was submitted on February 5th, and the news for biomedical researchers was not very good. According to sources the NIH is slated to receive a $500 million budget cut, before inflation is factored in—assuming a bill inflating their budget for 2007 passes through congress.

Making this even more dire for biomed researchers is the fact that over 10,000 NIH extramural grants are up for renewal in 2008. Those contending for extensions or renewals of such grants are now faced with double difficulty: less money to go around and more people vying for the same number of spaces. Constraints such as these have driven the average age of first-time grant recipients to over 40 years old, barely a young researcher anymore.

The simple truth is that the NIH is probably the single greatest investment of public funds apart from NASA in terms of knowledge generation for the benefit of society that the world has ever seen. Less funds mean less research; less Ph.D.s choosing an academic career; less innovation and less risk-taking. That means more orthodoxy, entrenched and defensive peer-review, and ultimately more echo-chambering.

Even with new funding programs aimed at transitioning postdocs to faculty, it’s hard to justify doing a post-doc to people in the field nowadays - if they have the flexibility, they can make more than double the salary working for industry. What does the future of our field, medical physics and MRI in particular, look like?

Neat.

Just for fun, here’s a bonus video of a chair stuck in a magnet. That looks like a lot of work.

A classic economic example is the “ultimatum game,” in which one participant gets 10 $1 bills (or loonies, in Canada). He chooses how many to offer to a second participant. If she accepts the offer, the money is split the way the first participant suggested; if she rejects the offer, nobody gets anything.

Logically, the first participant can maximize his money by offering a single dollar, because logically the second participant should accept that as being better than nothing. In real life, however, the second participant, if offered only a dollar or two, almost always rejects the offer.

Functional MRI scans of brain activity show that a low offer stimulates an area associated with negative emotions, including anger and disgust. It seems the second participant would rather punish the first participant for making such an insulting offer than make an easy buck. And usually, the person making the offer understands this and offers something close to an even split, averaging about $4.

I don’t really see why the above reasonable decision-making process is inherently non-rational or “emotional” though. Doesn’t it make good rational sense to “punish” someone making a lowball offer, so they are motivated to offer you more up front?

The most important criteria identified in the survey were access to training and experience that will prove useful, followed by access to books and journals, decent medical insurance, equipment, and the quality of the principal investigator. I’m not sure you’d find many postdocs who would disagree with these; if you’re going to spend three years of your life working on a project, then one would hope the skills and techniques learned would stand you in good stead in the future. Access to the scientific literature is vital, and if you’re not getting paid the earth, the ability to see a good doctor if you get sick is nice.

Least important on the list of concerns was the opportunity to advance within the department, followed by administration issues. Again, this is probably due to the way academic careers work, where it’s beneficial to move from one institution to another for different stages of your career, that way maximizing exposure to the broadest range of techniques, methods and approaches to science. Some institutions are also notoriously reticent about promoting their own postdocs into faculty positions.

In a number of ways, the path to PET/MRI has been reverse of that to PET/CT. The first PET/CT design emerged from industry–academia collaboration and was a prototype for human clinical use that eventually stimulated a commercial response and led to the development of PET/CT for imaging small animals. In contrast, PET/MRI began with the small-animal design and then, over a decade later, the first PET/MRI brain images were acquired on a dedicated prototype system, following an impressive industrial backing that far exceeded that of the early PET/CT developments.
[...]
A mere 2 y after the advent of commercial PET/CT, Johannes Czernin from UCLA, at the 2003 annual DGN meeting, commented that “PET/CT is a technical evolution that has led to a medical revolution.” Today, at the dawn of PET/MRI, it may be said that “PET/MRI is a medical evolution based on a technical revolution.” Although PET/CT appears to have replaced stand-alone PET for most oncologic indications, it is reasonable to assume that PET/MRI will be the preferred imaging option for neurologic and central nervous system indications. Without doubt, such dual-modality combinations are here to stay because they incorporate the diagnostic power of PET. Thus, PET/CT and PET/MRI, by virtue of their combined anatometabolic imaging, will lead to a “new-clear” medicine and the demise of “unclear” medicine.

This piece has somewhat messianic feel to it. I remember looking for PET/MRI systems at Seattle ISMRM last year, there were only two talks as far as I recall (maybe someone can dig up the abstracts, I’ve lent out my CD and it never returned, grr). Is it really true that there is widespread industry commitment to making dual-mode systems a reality? The engeineering challenge seems an order of magnitude more complex than with the marriage of PET/CT. It would be a different matter if someone had built a prototype and was publishing extensively on the advantages, but the above implies that the manufacturers are making a leap of faith.

And I’m not sure either that of all the hybrid technologies that could be pursued, PET/MRI even makes sense. For one thing, SPECT seems to be making some inroads, and is not tied down to one radioisotope the way PET is. And of course the PET reimbursement issue is notoriously complicated, with no sign of improvement on the horizon. SPECT/CT hybrids are beginning to get more sophisticated, and it wouldn’t be hard to imagine a SPECT/MRI system. Or even a MRI/CT system, which would really be a money-saver from an outpatient imaging standpoint. If the hybrid has application to bread and butter imaging as well as exotic research and oncology applications, it’s going to do better on the market.

None of this is to say that no one should go for PET/MRI; it would be unquestionably cool and powerful. But is it really the inevitable slam-dunk as it’s being made out to be?

(full text of article available online)

I haven’t read anything Dr. Haynes has published in peer-reviewed journals on the topic (I’ll see what I can find) but this seems like another case of popular media grossly over-estimating (or mis-estimating?) the significance of the research. Take this excerpt:

But scientists are making enough progress to make ethicists nervous, since the research has already progressed from identifying the regions of the brain where certain thoughts occur to identifying the very content of those thoughts.

Although I think my favorite part is the opening paragraph, where the author writes:

At a laboratory in Germany, volunteers slide into a doughnut-shaped MRI machine and perform simple tasks, such as deciding whether to add or subtract two numbers, or choosing which of two buttons to press.

They have no inkling that scientists in the next room are trying to read their minds — using a brain scan to figure out their intention before it is turned into action.

Um…I think the first “inkling” that something is amiss is when these evil scientists ask you to step inside their big shiny machine. Perhaps I’m overly-critical. I still think articles like this are amusing, but it makes me cringe when I think that this is the public’s view of MR research. Any other opinions?