News
Alzheimers Disease Neuroimaging Initiative
The National Institues of Health (NIH), in partnership with corporate and other private organizations, has launched a $60-million Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative to validate the use of serial MR and PET imaging and biological blood, CSF, and urine samples as markers to predict and measure the progression of early Alzheimer's disease. The study will take place at approximately 50 sites, including NYU. (Dr. Henry Rusinek is the site P.I. at NYU.) People interested in participating in the study can contact Schantel Williams at schantel.williams@med.nyu.edu or 212-263-7563 for additional information.
New Breast MRI Studies
Drs. Linda Moy and Cecilia Mercado are performing breast MRIs on the 3T magnet to obtain images with both an increased resolution and a faster acquisition time. Breast MR has a poor specificity, and they believe that with higher signal-to-noise ratios, the studies performed on the 3T magnet will have both increased sensitivity and specificity.
Dr. Moy is also performing MR spectroscopy and MR perfusion of the breasts on both the 1.5T and 3T magnets. Along with her colleagues in the Breast Cancer Prevention Care Program, she is developing a risk-assessment protocol to determine which high risk patients may benefit the most from a screening MR program.
New Grant: Value of Imaging-Related Information Technology
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a component of the Department of Health and Human Services, has awarded an R01 grant entitled “Value of Imaging-Related Information Technology” to the departments of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and NYU Medical Center. The study goal is to assess the impact of Medical Imaging Informatics (MII) on health-care costs and quality. The investigators plan to determine the financial impact of the deployment of a comprehensive MII system in two large academic radiology departments, determine the impact of MII on health-care quality focusing on the dimensions of quality as defined by the Institute of Medicine, and develop and validate a model to predict the impact of a comprehensive MII system on financial and quality outcomes in different hospital settings. Bernard A. Birnbaum, M.D., is the principal investigator of the NYU subcontract grant.
