European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - December 28, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                U above an Fri image helps in treating strokes and other vascular diseases. Left a technician adjusts  Meg equipment which provides super accurate measurements of brain activity. The see through Hody non surgical my ods for Sissing  Bod r i Toucan an a Ray team is focused on a a Pacific Plana of tha body. A computer Anat Zaa in Datalo Stoa ice a Cross sectional image. Tissues of varying. Density show up As different a Adas of  rotates 360 degrees around tha patient. A  uses radio Waves instead of a rays uses echoes of sound a form images of internal organs. Device pics up weak magnetic Fields Pul out by tha naive celts of tie brain images show he Active areas of tha brain. Doctor looks de atty inside the body Trout a hollow tube or optical Finbar. Tube is passed through a natural orifice or a surgical incision. Source the Columbia University collect of pity Plains and surgeons complot Home medical Ukia academic press dictionary of science and  millions of dollars and took up the floor space of two football Fields in the late 60s. Quot the pc was yet to come and the founders of Apple were still in High  the computer is also what enables the Fri to produce its image. At about the same time Hounsfield was working on his cat devices researchers in the United states or Paul Lauterbur of the state University of new York at Stony Brook and or. Raymond Damadian of the University s downstate medical Center were developing a new technique that would use the fact that atoms with an uneven number of protons in their nucleus act As tiny magnets. Their work was later developed by British scientists. The Hydrogen atom which has one Proton is the most frequently occurring atom in a living organism and is a major atomic constituent of water fat and muscle in fact of almost everything but Bone. If one used the Hydrogen atom As a signal source the researchers reasoned one could literally map the soft tissues of the body. One does this by putting the body into a Strong. Magnetic Field which tends to realign the tiny Hydrogen magnets which Are in a sort of spin wobble state like a worn out top. If you Send a radio signal into this sea of wobbling atomic nuclei and Knock them off by a few degrees and then Stop the signal they will react by sending a weak radio signal Back when they realign in the magnetic Field. By taking All of these signals a computer can translate them into shades of Gray and assemble a picture of whatever Structure you Are looking at Quot it s magnificent a Chase says. Quot the Anatomy is just  Quot with Fri and cat scans you can see better. But you still can t differentiate Between certain types of  the various endoscopes an outgrowth of japanese optics Are quite valuable to gastroenterologist and Chest physicians and ear Eye nose and Throat doctors they Start at about $5,000 to $g,000, which is affordable. One of the most promising new techniques Chase says is called Magneto Excepha Fograshy. This device simply picks up very weak m magnetic Fields put out by the firing nerve cells in the brain. Researchers can Tell with great accuracy what parts of the brain Are working what parts Are responding to various stimuli and with great Speed. Quot it has shown phenomenal results showing that areas of the brain change even in the adult a Chase  s really exciting work. Under your eyes you can see the areas of brain function change. Quot that suggests maybe you can train the brain. If you have a stroke train the brain to do the work that the damaged part once  the brain is the focus of another new technique called Quot functional  it s based on the fact that there is a magnetic difference Between oxygenated blood versus a oxygenated blood. By tracing those differences experts can read what parts of the brain Are Active in response to motor activity like the wiggle of a Finger or seeing or thinking. In certain brain tumor cases the functional imaging techniques May differentiate certain functional portions of the brain so that tutors can be specifically located and removed without additional neurological loss. And Chase thinks it has potential in psychiatry where doctors May be Able to read where the brains of some menial patients go awry. The availability of mris in Many More centers and the eventual ability to do functional imaging with those mris will make them More practical than pet scanning which is done Only at limited Sites. Tuesday december 2d, 1993 the stars Ano strikes at Tufts University school of Medicine in Medford mass., researchers Are using a German device called an Echo it that pairs up ultrasound and computers to form extremely Clear 3-d pictures of the heart As it beats in very close to real time. Again without shedding a drop of blood. The pictures says or. Natesa Pandian Are More graphic in Many ways than what a surgeon sees while he is operating on the inactive heart. Today when surgeons use ultrasound the pictures Are Grainy with poor Resolution. And they Are two dimensional. But using the Echo it device doctors either place a _ transducer or ultrasound probe on the patient s Chest or pass it Down the Throat. In the latter instance the transducer takes one millimetre thick snapshots of the heart on its Way Back up. These snapshots Are then manipulated by the computer to give a live action picture that can be rotated seen from a variety of angles taken apart and put Back together again. For a surgeon it s like taking off the Blindfold. When or. Joseph a Mccarthy now 54, was learning his Trade the surgeon who was schooling him said that the greatest development in his professional life was antibiotics. In Mccarthy s professional life it has been imaging Quot the ability to see before you go  in his area which is reconstructive surgery in the Skull and facial area cat scans show him very precisely where the damage has been done and he can very nearly write a script for the surgery that will  surgeons in general it Means Shorter procedures less invasive probing less loss of blood less incapacitation for the patient and Shorter Hospital stays says Mccarthy of Nyu s rehabilitation unit. Sometimes it Means not cutting at All when for instance a gallstone can be removed with endoscopic techniques. If the Bevy of modern devices has made surgery and Medicine in general More efficient it has not solved All of Medicine s problems. People have to be trained to utilize the new technologies fully. Mammography for instance is a Marvel in the Early detection of breast cancer. But in the United states it has been criticized for its unevenness Britain is improving because they Are spending More Money on training and the right equipment following the Lead of Sweden and i Lolland where mammography is a very effective diagnostic tool. Even the vascular system the blood vessels of the body Are being exploited for therapy As in angioplasty where arteries Are widened by inflating a Small balloon inside the artery