From the air, the twists and turns of rivers can easily be seen. In the body, however, tracing the twists and turns of blood vessels is difficult, but important. Vessel ‘bendiness’ can indicate the presence and progression of cancer.
This principle led UNC scientists to a new method of using a high-resolution ultrasound to identify early tumours in pre-clinical studies. The method, based on vessel bendiness or ‘tortuosity,’ potentially offers an inexpensive, non-invasive and fast method to detect cancer that could someday help doctors identify cancers when tumours are less than a centimetre in size.
Paul Dayton, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering explains, ‘The correlation between vessel tortuosity and cancer is well-established. What’s new about our finding is that we can visualise these vessels in minutes with a very quick scan, using very inexpensive imaging methods.’ Dr. Dayton is a member of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The UNC team used a new high-resolution ultrasound method, called ‘acoustic angiography,’ with an intravascular contrast agent that allowed them to acquire images of only the blood vessels. ‘Unlike current clinical ‘grayscale’ ultrasound, this method filters out all tissue signals, so we can see small blood vessels clearly.’ says Dayton.
‘Our results showed a definitive difference between vessels within and surrounding tumours versus those associated with normal healthy vasculature. The limitation that we must now address is that our method works only for tumours at a shallow depth into tissue, such as melanomas or thyroid cancer. Our next studies will focus on this imaging-depth issue as well as evaluating the ability of this technology to determine a tumour

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A new three-dimensional (3-D) digital mammography technique has the potential to significantly improve the accuracy of breast cancer screening, according to a study.
Two-dimensional (2-D) x-ray mammography, the current primary screening method for early detection of breast cancer in women, is a valuable tool but has some limitations. Surrounding normal tissue can mask lesions, and 2-D views do not provide direct information about the volumetric appearance

Stroboscopic training, performing a physical activity while using eyewear that simulates a strobe-like experience, has been found to increase visual short-term memory retention, and the effects last for 24 hours.
Participants in a Duke University study engaged in physical activities, such as playing catch, while using either specialised eyewear that limits vision to only brief snapshots or while using eyewear with clear lenses that provides uninterrupted vision. Participants from the Duke community, including varsity athletes, completed a computer-based visual memory test before and after the physical activities. The study found that participants who trained with the strobe eyewear gained a boost in visual memory abilities.
Participants completed a memory test that required them to note the identity of eight letters of the alphabet that were briefly displayed on a computer screen. After a variable delay, participants were asked to recall one of the eight letters. On easy-level trials, the recall prompt came immediately after the letters disappeared, but on more difficult trials, the prompt came as late as 2.5 seconds following the display. Because participants did not know which letter they would be asked to recall, they had to retain all of the items in memory.
‘Humans have a memory buffer in their brain that keeps information alive for a certain short-lived period,’ said Greg Appelbaum, assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke and first author of the study. ‘Wearing the strobe eyewear during the physical training seemed to boost the ability to retain information in this buffer.’
The strobe eyewear disrupts vision by only allowing the user to see glimpses of the world. Users must adjust their visual processing in order to perform normally, and this adjustment produces a lingering benefit: once participants removed the strobe eyewear, there was an observed boost in their visual memory retention that was found to still be active 24 hours later.
Earlier work by Appelbaum and the project’s senior researcher, Stephen Mitroff, had shown that stroboscopic training improves visual perception, including the ability to detect subtle motion cues and the processing of briefly presented visual information. Yet the earlier study had not determined how long the benefits might last.
‘Our earlier work on stroboscopic training showed that it can improve perceptual abilities, but we dont know exactly how,’ said Mitroff, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience and member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. ‘This project takes a big step by showing that these improved perceptual abilities are driven, at least in part, by improvements in visual memory.’
‘Improving human cognition is an important goal with so many benefits,’ said Appelbaum, also a member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. ‘Interestingly, our findings demonstrate one way in which visual experience has the capacity to improve cognition.’ Duke University

Stroke is the fourth leading cause of death and a common cause of long-term disability in the United States, but doctors have very few proven treatment methods. Now a new device that mechanically removes stroke-causing clots from the brain is being hailed as a game-changer.
In a recent clinical trial, the SOLITAIRE Flow Restoration Device dramatically outperformed the standard mechanical treatment.

SOLITAIRE, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in March, is among an entirely new generation of devices designed to remove blood clots from blocked brain arteries in patients experiencing an ischemic stroke. It has a self-expanding, stent-like design, and once inserted into a blocked artery using a thin catheter tube, it compresses and traps the clot. The clot is then removed by withdrawing the device, reopening the blocked blood vessel.

‘This new device is significantly changing the way we can treat ischemic stroke,’ said the study’s lead author, Dr. Jeffrey L. Saver, director of the UCLA Stroke Center and a professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. ‘We are going from our first generation of clot-removing procedures, which were only moderately good in reopening target arteries, to now having a highly effective tool.’

Results of the study showed that the device opened blocked vessels without causing symptomatic bleeding in or around the brain in 61 percent of patients. The standard FDA