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Techniques Reveal Clues to Body’s Biochemistry

Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2004;292:2328.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used since the mid-1980s to detect anatomical changes caused by disease, the technique has lacked the ability to detect the earliest molecular hallmarks of illness—alterations in the biochemical processes that are at the heart of cell function.

But advances in MRI technology may someday remove this limitation, according to researchers studying new, highly sensitive MRI devices to look at the metabolic intricacies of normal and disease states. Their hope, they say, is that such advances will improve diagnoses and allow physicians to monitor response to therapies.

A mouse goes for a spin in a new imaging device that researchers hope to use in humans to see tissues and biological processes invisible to today’s medical imaging machines. Photo credit: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

MOST POWERFUL MRI

Current MRIs work by contrasting water within tissues, which gives information about anatomical changes.

"These are relatively insensitive . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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