Contrast in Biological News

New MRI technique could mean fewer breast biopsies in high-risk women

... lasts about a half hour, the technician injects a contrast agent into a vein in the patient's arm. Over time, the contrast agent flows throughout the body, including the ... lesions often have immature vasculature, and the contrast agent flows in and "leaks" out quickly. ...

Lyncean Technologies Inc. receives $1.2 M from NCRR to develop new imaging technique

... Resources (NCRR) to develop "Differential Phase contrast Imaging" using the unique x-ray beam produced by ... employed a technique called Differential Phase contrast Imaging (DPCI) developed by Professor Franz ... images, using the new phase and scattering contrast mechanisms, which are not possible in ...

Scientists can predict nano drug outcome

... issue of Radiology . The investigators used contrast agents encapsulated in tiny fat bubbles called ... of porous breast tumors which had absorbed the contrast agents. On the other hand, poor images indicated the contrast agents had not substantially penetrated the ....

New technique images tumor vessel leakiness to predict breast cancer chemotherapy outcome

... designed nanometer-sized capsules containing a contrast agent that could only leak into tumors with blood ... Emory University. "By simply measuring how much contrast agent reaches the tumor, we can predict how much ... liposomal capsule filled with iodinated contrast agent was injected into rats with six-day-old ...

Novel technique changes lymph node biopsy, reduces radiation exposure

... hemoglobin, or lipids, can be used as endogenous contrast agents for imaging. When light is shone on the tissue, the contrast agent absorbs the light, converts it to heat, and ... tissue by listening to the sound." Exogenous contrast agents, like the gold nanocages developed by ...

Novel technique changes lymph node biopsy, reduces radiaiton exposure

... hemoglobin, or lipids, can be used as endogenous contrast agents for imaging. When light is shone on the tissue, the contrast agent absorbs the light, converts it to heat, and ... tissue by listening to the sound." Exogenous contrast agents, like the gold nanocages developed by ...

Multiple Sclerosis: new MRI contrast medium enables early diagnosis in animal model

... unrecognized up to now, with the aid of a new contrast medium, Gadofluorine M, in magnetic resonance ... lesions are present on MRI. "With this new contrast medium, we were able to visualize five to ten ... in comparison to conventional MRI images and contrast media", reports Professor Dr. Martin Bendszus, ...

Scientists find color vision system independent of motion detection

... that suggested motion detection and color contrast may work in tandem. The studys authors are: ... institutions. Whether motion vision uses color contrast is a controversial issue that has been ... that motion detection is independent of color contrast is somewhat counterintuitive, said NYUs Desplan. ...

Contrast agent trials in swine

... is a highly promising techniquealthough effective contrast agents have thus far been lacking. A team led by ... School in Boston, Massachusetts, has developed a contrast agent that makes visible the microcalcifications ... that in validation trials in swine their new contrast agent distinguishes specific calcium salts in ...

New thoracic imaging approach can pinpoint underlying venous problems

... to compensate for the extra time it takes contrast solution to reach the veins so useful images can ... at University Hospital. By the time the contrast reached the patients veins, there were too many ... second contains a diluted mixture of 100 CC of contrast and 10 CC of saline solution. The key to ...

USC biomedical team to participate in $6 million low vision project

... displays in two ways: first, they will enhance contrast in scenes and suppress background noise ... task of building displays with region-specific contrast enhancement display. He will work with DXO Labs ... whether subjects have better visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, visual fields, color vision and ...

Color contrast is 'seen' by the brain early doors

... Colour contrast is detected much earlier in the brain than ... at Durham University have confirmed that colour contrast is first detected by part of the brain called ... showed the patient visual illusions in which the contrast between the coloured spots in the foreground and ...

Domestication of Capsicum annuum chile pepper provides insights into crop origin and evolution

... distant wild progenitors by different prehistoric cultures in Mexico, in contrast to maize and beans which appear to have been domesticated only once. ... distant locations is not significantly influencing genetic diversity, in contrast to maize and beans seeds, which are traded by farmers across long ...

MIT: Why we have difficulty recognizing faces in photo negatives

... areas are the same as they would be in a normal image. Similar contrast relationships can be found in other parts of the face, primarily the ... (the fusiform face areas) were far more active when looking at the contrast chimeras than when looking at pure negatives. ...

Unusual use of toys in infancy a clue to later autism

... children. "We found that these behaviors were relatively rare in the contrast group, but very high in the group who later developed autism," Ozonoff ... earlier and therefore useful in early diagnosis," Ozonoff said. In contrast to previous research, the current prospective study began with a group of ...

New technique sees into tissue at greater depth, resolution

... an antibody attaching to a receptor. "The use of metal nanoparticles as contrast agents with photothermal OCT technology could lead to a host of potential clinical applications," Izatt said. "Organically-based contrast agents can cause damage or death to the targeted cells, while metal ...

Carnegie Mellon MRI technology that non-invasively locates, quantifies specific cells in the body

... therapeutics. Other MRI methods for visualizing cells use metal-based contrast agents, which can make it difficult to clearly identify labeled cells in ... "The large background signal from mobile water and intrinsic tissue contrast differences can often make it challenging to unambiguously identify ...

Comparing apples and pears

... is not easy as fruit contains a lot of water and the resolution and contrast of conventional medical 3-D scanners is insufficient. The Leuven team ... are accurate down to and below 1/1000 of a millimeter, with sufficient contrast to separate out void spaces from cells. The images are now used in ...

Oosight microscope enables embryonic stem cell breakthrough

... polarized light technology to image the spindle noninvasively, with high contrast and quality. You can actually look in the Oosight microscope and see ... microscope, which dramatically decreased distortion and improved the contrast of the image. Rudolf Oldenbourg further improved the polarizing microscope ...

November GEOLOGY and GSA TODAY Media Highlights

... shown that its role increases with the intensity of physical erosion. In contrast to reactions involving CO2, the chemical weathering of rocks by sulfuric ... old, with significant variation of less than 10 million years. This age contrast reflects methane accumulation from different source formations to an ...

West Nile virus' spread through nerve cells linked to serious complication

... and immunology and of medicine, began the new study because of a puzzling contrast in the ways West Nile virus infection affects the central nervous system. ... barrier to infect the brain," says Diamond. "But the epidemiological contrast suggested to us that there might be a fundamentally different infectious ...

MIT creates 3-D images of living cell

... cell without the help of fluorescent markers or other externally added contrast agents, said Michael Feld, director of MIT's George R. Harrison ... the cells, you can't look at their movements, and when you add external contrast agents you can never be sure that you haven't somehow interfered with ...

Urban water ecology at the ESA annual meeting

... apparent in fish food availability: In the four lakes, terrestrial insects comprised up to 100 percent of the diet of fish in undeveloped lakes, in contrast to a maximum of 2 percent in developed lakes, a pattern that was also apparent at the regional and national scale. Francis' research also showed ...

Comprehensive look at rare leukemia finds relatively few genetic changes launch disease

... mutated in adult AML. Point mutations involve a single chemical change in the molecular building blocks of DNA. The data demonstrated that, in contrast to pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), AML is characterized by a very low burden of mutations. The researchers found slightly more than two ...

Study reveals a reprogrammed role for the androgen receptor

... switches on an entirely different set of genes in the latter group than in the former, the researchers report in the July 24 issue of Cell. In contrast to androgen-dependent prostate tumors, androgen-independent ones experience an uptick in the activity of genes that control cell division, or ....

Common allergy drug reduces obesity and diabetes in mice

... in fat tissue. Fat tissue from obese and insulin-resistant mice and people is marked by a dramatic absence of this cell type, in dramatic contrast to an already reported overabundance in fat tissue of inflammatory immune cells called macrophages. "It seems that we're seeing the emergence of ...

New discovery suggests trees evolved camouflage defense against long extinct predator

... deter predators such as thorns and noxious chemicals," said lead researcher Dr Kevin Burns from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. "In contrast animals often use colours to hide from predators or advertise defences, but until now there has been little evidence of colour based defences in ...

Facile synthesis of nanoparticles with multiple functions advanced in Singapore

... phase to the organic phase was successfully applied towards the synthesis of a variety of metallic, alloy and semiconductor nanoparticles. In contrast to other approaches for nanoparticles synthesis, the IBN protocol allows metal-based nanoparticles to be prepared in an organic medium using ...

Cells use import machinery to export their goods as well

... sort of shipping was assumed to end with the vesicles fusing completely to the membrane and delivering their whole load of proteins and lipids, in contrast to the more discriminating process by which similar container ships import proteins from outside the cell, called endocytosis. But, in a paper to be ...

Evolution of a contraceptive for sea lamprey

... findings will be published by PloS ONE on June 25. Lampreys evolved about 450 million years ago, before the appearance of sharks. In contrast to sharks, fish and land vertebrates, lampreys have no jaw. They feed on fish by attaching themselves to the fish and sucking their body fluids. ...

CSHL scientists harness logic of 'Sudoku' math puzzle to vastly enhance genome-sequencing capability

... order in which the letters of the DNA alphabet (A, T, G, and C) line up in the genome to be determined all at once. This achievement is in stark contrast to past approaches that allowed only a single DNA sample to be sequenced at a time. It also significantly improves upon current approaches that, at ...

Study highlights massive imbalances in global fertilizer use

... to maintain soil fertility and to feed people. So it's not a matter of nutrient pollution but nutrient depletion." U.S. and Europe The contrast between Kenya and China is dramatic and will require vastly different solutions, the authors said. However, large-scale change is possible, they ...

Researchers gain genome-wide insights into patterns of the world's human population structures

... of human genetic variation can be attributed to differences among individuals, and 5 to 15 percent is due to differences between populations. In contrast to these broad-scale patterns, more recently researchers have tried to look at fine-scale population structure. Usually these studies focus on only ...

Milestone in live microscopy focus of $2 million NIH grant

... blurring problem created when molecules move through their fluid medium; and a new generation of scientific instrumentation to deliver optimum image contrast for biological samples and to correct image distortions generated by lenses. "It should be noted that each of the components of our proposed new ...

Your brain on -- and off -- caffeine

... said Stacey Sigmon, Ph.D., research associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont and first author on the study. "In contrast to what most of us coffee lovers would think, our study showed no difference between when the participant was maintained on chronic placebo and when ...

Satellite imagery shows fragile Wilkins Ice Shelf destabilized

... away from the fragile ice shelf. A very rough estimate suggests that, so far, about 700 sq km of ice has been lost from the Wilkins Ice Shelf. In contrast to the ice bridge, which shattered very quickly, it is expected that the discharge of ice will continue for some weeks. The icebergs are calving as a ...

Laughing hyenas, wailing levees, the sound of cheese and blaring bagpipes

... modified to stick to the cells that line blood vessels. This technique, ultrasound-mediated gene delivery (UMGD), exploits the properties of contrast agents, microparticles that are normally injected into the body to improve the quality of ultrasound images. In UMGD, the tiny particles are ...

Biolex presents Locteron US Phase 2a hepatitis C data at EASL

... treatment of hepatitis C through a more favorable side-effect profile and dosing convenience compared to existing pegylated interferon products. In contrast to Locteron's controlled-release mechanism, the currently approved products, Pegasys and PEG-Intron, and the investigational product Albuferon, are ...

Genetic switch potential key to new class of antibiotics

... not only genetic coding ability but also contains its own switch to shut off the decoding process. The current structural study found that in contrast to other riboswitches, the preQ1 aptamer is unusually small (34 nucleotides), which is about 2.5-fold shorter than functionally related riboswitches ...

Unlikely life thriving at Antarctica's Blood Falls

... Blood Falls, a water-fall-like feature at the edge of the glacier that flows irregularly, but often has a strikingly bright red appearance in stark contrast to the icy background. The key piece of data supporting the hypothesis that the microbes were in fact surviving by turning Fe(III) to Fe(II) came ...