Schizophrenia Daily News Blog

Federal $$ To Improve Brain Scanning

Researchers in Boston are to recieve almost $20 million from the U.S. government. Their mission: to improve brain scanning programs so that patients can be diagnosed and treated sooner.

"The tools we're after would make diseases detectable at earlier stages when they're more curable," said Dr. Steven Seltzer, chairman of radiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

The researchers are specifically looking to improve the software programs that interpret the brain images that come out of MRIs, CTs, and other types of scans. For example, better interprative software may be able to detect subtle gradations of color and brightness (certain patterns of which can be indicative of specific conditions) that a human eye cannot.

Newer software might also be able to compare large numbers of scans at once and find diagnostic patterns among them.

Whatever progress is made on the federally funded project will be made freely available to all interested scientists.

For the full story, see "Boston researchers get $20m from US to improve scanning" (Sept 28 2004). Available from Boston.com news (http://www.boston.com).

Read about currently available brain scanning technology that researchers use to diagnose and to explore the disease pathology.