Eliza Mahoney
Physics Blog Entry #1
The University of Virginia's departments of Physics and Radiology has developed a unique new imaging method that has the potential for use in the medical world as well as the industrial and physics world.
It is called "polarized nuclear imaging" and combines aspects of magnetic resonance imaging and gamma-ray imaging. It could provide a relatively inexpensive way to visualize the gas space of the lungs by having a patient inhale a gas containing ceratin isotopes. The doctors can use PNI to produce an image.
Wilson Miller, physicist at UVA, says, "This method makes possible a truly new, absoutely different class of medical diagnostics. We're combining the advantages of using highly detectable nuclear tracers with the spectral sensitivity and diagnostic power of MRI techniques."
Wilson Miller and a fellow physicist, Gordon Cates, with the imaging appartus that they built in their lab at the University of Virginia
This new imaging system could also image certain areas of the body by injecting isotopes into the bloodstream. Because the tracer material would only be used in small quantities in this procedure, the radioactivity would threaten little to no danger to the patient.
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