MRI Based Cancer Detection

[Ben]

I thought this was an interesting article, and it hit close to home for me. My niece just had seven hours of brain surgery yesterday to remove a walnut-sized growth that they were unable to identify as benign / malignant. There was a lot of back and forth about going in for a biopsy first versus just going in to remove the growth. After a lot of discussion with the surgeons, she chose to just have the one surgery to remove everything versus doing the biopsy, then potentially having to go back in anyway. Having this technology available sure would have made the decision easier and removed a lot of uncertainty.

http://www.gizmag.com/mri-cancer-detection/36808/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=11a24625cc-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-11a24625cc-90471309

[griz]

Good news for me too.  I had stomach cancer.  They removed it, but it popped back up on my liver.  They did an MRI, the kind with contrast dye mentioned in the article, but ended up doing a biopsy because ordinary MRIs don't tell them much other than the fact there is something there.  It would be nice if my frequent MRIs could look specifically for cancer.