Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Our coverage of proceedings from this week's American Heart Association (AHA) meeting continues in our CT Digital Community with an article on the prognostic value of CT coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring in predicting heart attacks.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University led a study of data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) to see if CAC scoring had the same value for younger and older individuals as it did for the middle-aged folks who form the core of today's screening population. The goal is to offer physicians a tool for predicting heart attack risk that's more precise than the Framingham risk score, and potentially enable the use of CAC scoring in a broader range of asymptomatic individuals who might benefit from it.
Learn what they discovered by clicking here, or visit our CT Digital Community at ct.auntminnie.com.
ASL-MRI may best PET for Alzheimer's
In other news, a new study indicates that MRI with an arterial spin labeling (ASL) technique might have advantages over FDG-PET in tracking and diagnosing Alzheimer's disease.
Radiologists reading ASL-MRI scans reported higher levels of sensitivity than when reading FDG-PET studies, although specificity was lower. Agreement was also good between the two techniques.
MRI has several advantages over PET that might make ASL imaging a better option than the molecular technique. Find out what they are by clicking here, or visit our MRI Digital Community at mri.auntminnie.com.
