Tumor too small MRI "invisible"?

treatment of disease, "early detection, early treatment" has long been a popular slogan, but for many cancer patients, early detection is not easy. In addition to the body does not feel strange and did not do timely examination, the small size of the tumor will also escape the modern imaging technology of the "legal eye", so as to obtain the opportunity to continue to grow in the patient's body, become a "fish leaking net."However, a new imaging technique, recently published in Science Advances, will expose these "leaky fish." A team led by North Shore University Health Systems has developed a new 3D imaging technology that dramatically improves the visibility of brain tumors in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, allowing them to be diagnosed at a smaller and more treatable early stage.This is a new MRI pulse sequence, called "T1 relaxation-enhanced steady state (T1 RESS)," that suppresses the signal strength of non-enhanced background tissue by difference, while maintaining the signal strength of enhanced contrast agent lesions, thereby increasing the visibility of tumors in the MRI.In addition, T1 RESS regulates vascular signals, with two variants, one called "balanced" T1 RESS (bT1 RESS), with a fully balanced gradient moment that makes contrast-enhanced blood vessels appear bright, and the other is "unbalanced" T1 RESS (uT1 RESS), which blackens blood vessels by using a steady-state reading with unbalanced gradients.Brain enhancement MRI results for 54 adult subjects with suspected or known brain tumors showed that the technology tripled the contrast between tumors and normal brain tissue compared to the widely used MRI technique, greatly improving tumor visibility and making it easy to detect.Lead author Dr Robert Edelman stressed: "The advantages of this new technology are particularly pronounced for very small malignancies. So this malignant tumor is hard to see, and standard imaging techniques may leave it out. For patients treated with surgery or radiotherapy, contrast-enhanced scans can improve visibility of the edges of the tumor to ensure that the entire tumor is treated and better results are obtained. Althoughcurrent research has focused on imaging brain tumors, we plan to use the technology to detect breast and prostate cancer. Dr Robert Edelman said: "However, the results of this preliminary study need to be confirmed in larger multi-site trials. In addition to improving contrast, thethe study also confirmed that T1 RESS is equally beneficial for a range of non-tumor areas, such as uT1 RESS' increased sensitivity to contrast and inhibition of intracvascular signals to help detect active lesions of multiple sclerosis or to assess vascular wall inflammation, while the high SNR efficiency of bT1RESS significantly reduces the dose or scan time required for magnetic resonance angioscopy.It is important to note that since the technology only involves the installation of specialized packages, it is easy to apply widely to MRI scanners. If widely used to achieve early diagnosis of malignant tumors, the hope of cure for thousands of cancer patients will be greatly increased. (Biological Exploration):1.Twofold improved tumor-to-brain contrast using a novel 1 sly-enhanced steady-state (T1RESS) MRI