Scientists at the University of Basel have developed nanoparticles which can serve as efficient contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging. This new type of nanoparticles produce around ten times more contrast than the actual contrast agents and are responsive to specific environments.

Contrast agents enhance the imaging of tissues obtained by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Whilst the detection of structural details in the body can be significantly improved by using contrast agents, current substances produce insufficient contrast for the detection of the early stages of diseases. Another limitation is that current contrast agents do not sense their biochemical environments. Researchers from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Basel have developed nanoparticles, which can serve as ‘smart’ contrast agents for MRI.

Contrast agents are usually based on the metal Gadolinium, which is injected and serves for an improved imaging of various organs in an MRI. Gadolinium ions should be bound with a carrier compound to avoid the toxicity to the human body of the free ions. Therefore, highly efficient contrast agents requiring lower Gadolinium concentrations represent an important step for advancing diagnosis and improving patient health prognosis.

The research groups of Prof. Cornelia Palivan and Prof. Wolfgang Meier from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Basel have introduced a new type of nanoparticles, which combine multiple properties required for contrast agents: an increased MRI contrast for lower concentration, a potential for long blood circulation and responsiveness to different biochemical environments. These nanoparticles were obtained by co-assembly of heparin-functionalized polymers with trapped gadolinium ions and stimuli-responsive peptides.

The study shows, that the nanoparticles have the capacity of enhancing the MRI signal tenfold higher than the current agents. In addition, they have an enhanced efficacy in reductive milieu, characteristic for specific regions, such as cancerous tissues. These nanoparticles fulfil numerous key criteria for further development, such as absence of cellular toxicity, no apparent anticoagulation property, and high shelf stability. The concept developed by the researchers at the University of Basel to produce better contrast agents based on nanoparticles highlights a new direction in the design of MRI contrast agents, and supports their implementation for future applications.

University of Basel www.unibas.ch/en/News-Events/News/Uni-Research/Better-Contrast-Agents-Based-on-Nanoparticles.html

Stanford Health Care recently released a new app that allows patients using Android smartphones to easily access their own medical information anywhere in the world. The Android version and the iOS 8 MyHealth mobile app are both designed to put a patient’s health information right at their fingertips, making it quick and simple for them to manage their care, including reviewing test results, paying medical bills, managing prescriptions, scheduling appointments, and conducting video visits with Stanford physicians.
‘At Stanford Health Care we are continuing to develop a suite of mobile offerings and innovations that empower our patients, making it easy and convenient for them to access the information and tools they need to manage their health,’ said Pravene Nath, MD, Chief Information Officer, Stanford Health Care. ‘By developing and incorporating new digital technology and leveraging available health data, we are providing increased, flexible opportunities for patients to engage with clinicians and better manage their overall care.’
Over 200,000 people are now messaging their physicians, scheduling appointments, and reviewing their medical records through Stanford Health Care’s MyHealth. The in-house developed apps leverage Stanford Health Care’s digital platform, which with its electronic health record integration provides a seamless experience for the user to get all the important health information they need. Additionally, the apps allow patients to communicate directly with their care team through a confidential and secure messaging system, and make quick, easy, and secure online payments.
This latest version also includes new features such as:
TouchID for faster and more secure entry; and In app and Apple Watch alerts when new lab results and messages from the patient’s care team are received.

Stanford Health Care http://tinyurl.com/zmfwdv8

Researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington have demonstrated that electrical conductivity can be an effective means to precisely measure the amount of blood present in dry blood spot analysis, providing a new alternative to the current preferred approach of measuring sodium levels.
Dry blood spots are a pinprick of blood blotted on filter paper and allowed to air dry, which is then sent to a laboratory for analysis. Simple and inexpensive, dry blood spot analysis is routinely used to screen newborns for metabolic disorders and has also proven effective in diagnosing infant HIV infection, especially in developing countries where health budgets are limited.
‘Our new method, which involves using an electrode probe to measure electrical conductivity, has proven accurate to within one percent,’ said Purnendu Dasgupta, Hamish Small Chair in Ion Analysis and James Garrett Professor in UTA’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. ‘It also has the considerable advantage of using up none of the sample where the currently preferred approach uses around half the sample.’

Dasgupta and his co-researchers used 12 volunteers aged 20 to 66, taking pinpricks of blood and letting the dry blood spot samples dry. They then took a 3 millimeter punch out of each dry blood spot, dissolved the punch in methanol and water mixtures and used a dip-type small diameter ring-disk electrode to measure the conductance of the samples, determining the minimum immersion depth that proved accurate in measuring the amount of blood to within one percent.
‘As analytical instrumentation has improved, dry blood spot analysis is becoming increasingly popular for clinical trials to monitor the effects of therapeutic drugs and for large-scale epidemiology and genetic studies, where it is vital to know the exact amount of blood in the sample,’ Dasgupta said. ‘Our new dip probe method offers clear advantages, but it does have the same problem as measuring sodium in that it does not function if the subject has abnormal electrolyte levels, which happens in some diseases.’

www.uta.edu/news/releases/2016/07/Dasgupta%20Blood%20Spots.php

A new study shows that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans are the safest and most effective way to identify high risk patients with cardiac chest pain.
The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), showed that cardiac MRI was better overall at predicting serious events, such as death or heart attack, following chest pain suspected to be angina.
The researchers from the University of Leeds carried out a five-year follow-up study in 750 people, to find out the best way of separating patients based on whether they were at high- or low-risk of serious heart events.
They compared MRI scans, a non-invasive test which does not use potentially dangerous radiation, with SPECT, a procedure which uses ionizing radiation and is commonly used in the diagnosis of coronary heart disease.
Coronary heart disease (CHD), the world’s biggest killer, is responsible for nearly 70,000 deaths in the UK each year, an average of 190 people each day, or one death around every eight minutes.
Most deaths from CHD are caused by a heart attack. CHD occurs when the vital arteries which serve the heart are narrowed or blocked by a build-up of fatty tissues. This can cause chest pain, or angina, which can lead to a heart attack if left untreated.
When a person has suspected angina, they are most likely to be tested with either an X-ray angiogram, an invasive procedure which uses a type of radio-opaque dye to image the inside of the arteries, or SPECT, a non-invasive procedure which also involves ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation is damaging to living cells.
In contrast, MRI scans use strong magnetic fields and radio waves to produce a detailed image of the inside of the body, and are already widely used to help diagnose other medical conditions.
The paper resulted from a large five year follow-up study and follows a series of papers from the original CE-MARC (Clinical Evaluation of MAgnetic Resonance imaging in Coronary heart disease) study.
These papers have contributed to the growing body of evidence that cardiac MRI is the best option for the diagnosis and management of patients with coronary heart disease.
Earlier evidence from this BHF-funded study also showed that MRI is more cost-effective than SPECT in the diagnosis of coronary heart disease.
This research is expected to inform future clinical guidelines for the investigation of stable coronary heart disease. In doing so it could ease pressure on the NHS as only one hospital appointment is required for MRI, compared with two for SPECT.
Professor John Greenwood from the School of Medicine, who led the research, said: ‘Although SPECT is currently more widely available than MRI, the use of MRI across a wide spectrum of diseases means that it will be much more readily available for heart disease investigation in coming years.

University of Leeds http://tinyurl.com/z7cc2ny

Agfa HealthCare has joined the Watson Health medical imaging collaborative, a global initiative comprised of more than fifteen leading health systems, academic medical centres, ambulatory radiology providers and imaging technology companies. The collaborative aims to bring cognitive imaging into daily practice to help doctors address breast, lung, and other cancers; diabetes; eye health; brain disease; and heart disease and related conditions, such as stroke.
Members of the collaborative plan to put Watson to work to extract insights from previously invisible’ unstructured imaging data and combine that with a broad variety of data from other sources. In doing so, the efforts may help physicians make personalized care decisions relevant to a specific patient while building a body of knowledge to benefit broader patient populations. This information may include data from electronic health records, radiology and pathology reports, lab results, doctors’ progress notes, medical journals, clinical care guidelines and published outcomes studies.
Initial plans include training Watson and evaluating potential new offerings in a variety of patient care environments ranging from stand-alone ambulatory settings to integrated health delivery networks. The aim in doing so is to gather data based on diverse real-world experience and to share findings to inform how the medical community might reduce operational and financial inefficiencies, improve physician workflows, and adopt a patient-focused approach to improving patient care and outcomes.
‘With an ability to draw insights from massive volumes of integrated structured and unstructured data sources, cognitive computing could transform how clinicians diagnose, treat and monitor patients,’ said Anne Le Grand, vice president of Imaging for Watson Health. ‘Through IBMs medical imaging collaborative, Watson may create opportunities for radiologists to extract greater insights and value from imaging data while better managing costs.’
James Jay, Vice President Imaging IT and Integrated Care Solutions businesses at Agfa HealthCare, elaborates: ‘We are very excited about the opportunity to collaborate with IBM and Watson. Healthcare systems are under enormous pressure to improve productivity; our combined expertise has the capability to harness the untapped power of technology to deliver the gains that have so far only been achieved in isolated use cases. Together we will look for ways to advance our customers’ ability to leverage the analytics power of Watson united with our own Enterprise Imaging platform, to assure that the right knowledge is available, at the right time, to help diagnose and treat their patients. We will be diving into specific use cases to turn the power of big data into real, tangible applications focused on specific improvements in either speed or accuracy of decisions.’
Watson is the first commercially available cognitive computing capability representing a new era in computing. The system, delivered through the cloud, analyses high volumes of data, understands complex questions posed in natural language, and proposes evidence-based answers. Watson continuously learns, gaining in value and knowledge over time, from previous interactions. In April 2015, the company launched IBM Watson Health and the Watson Health Cloud platform. The new unit will help improve the ability of doctors, researchers and insurers to innovate by surfacing insights from the massive amount of personal health data being created and shared daily. The Watson Health Cloud allows this information to be de-identified, shared and combined with a dynamic and constantly growing aggregated view of clinical, research and social health data.

http://tinyurl.com/hxnrlns