Radiology fellow moves from present-day patients to historical artifacts to understand health and illness

Researchers in the Vanderbilt are nearing completion of an ingenious undertaking that may be a highpoint of their careers — a non-addictive alternative for relieving chronic pain.

Vanderbilt researchers report that when people who are having their brains scanned by fMRI perform a task, like wiggling their fingers, certain signals increase in white matter throughout the brain, which has long been thought to play a lesser role the more the brain's more energetic gray matter.

Vanderbilt researchers found reduced net flow of cerebrospinal fluid in Huntington’s disease, which could contribute to mutant protein retention and altered responsiveness to medications delivered via the spinal cord.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been designated a Comprehensive Radiopharmaceutical Therapy Center of Excellence by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. It is the only such center in Tennessee.

An MRI method developed by Vanderbilt researchers uses imaging data to derive cell size and could be added to clinical practice for better monitoring of breast cancer treatment response.

Virginia Planz, MD, has been named section chief of Body Imaging in the Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.