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New MEG scanning on Good Morning America this morning

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 10:42 pm
by CureIous
Wow talk about cutting edge! Was surprised to not see it mentioned yet or did I miss the boat? The one girl they had in there, had suffered mild, intermittent seizures for a number of years. Then all the sudden it went to HUNDREDS per day! This new MEG scan was able to pinpoint where the problem was, after all other imaging methods had failed, because the MEG actually shows what particular brain pathways are lighting up at a given moment, and sure as shoot, they found the one tiny spot on there that was misfiring and causing the seizures. Needless to say she is by all accounts, "cured" and seizure free to this day.

The implications as they have stated, go to Alzheimers and a host of other diseases, of course they didn't mention MS, but that goes without saying. There's only a handful of MEG labs in the country right now (and we thought SWI was cutting edge sheesh), and it is not the scan of first choice, rather of last resort, but this thing can do some pretty incredible things showing where and how your brain is transmitting signals.

I don't have to even hint at how many implications there are towards MS patients, imagine them doing one of these as a baseline for a pre-stenter/angioplasty. Then 6 months later. Of course we know the SWI is going to show iron levels in precise areas and track those, but this is a totally different way of looking at things. It's pretty exciting.

I know MEG didn't just get invented yesterday, but from the application I saw them use it for this morning, WOW. Today's computing power is what makes all this new stuff work...

Anyone got anything else on this? I think they said 15 of them in the US...

Mark

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:27 pm
by Algis
MEG is Magnetoencephalography

You may see a brief explanation at the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography