Vibrating Technology Promises to Replace Biopsies in Diagnosing Diseased Tissue

Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), developed at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic, uses low frequency sound waves to determine whether tissues and organs are too stiff, a sign of trouble

Biopsies, although invasive and unpleasant, are typically the best way to diagnose the health of human tissue, especially the liver. A group of researchers and physicians at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., is hoping to change this through a relatively new approach known as magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), which they developed to measure the stiffness or elasticity of tissue and organs without the need for a scalpel.

Through MRE, a device placed on the body near the tissue being tested uses vibration to generate low frequency sound waves that pass through organs that have varying degrees of elasticity. These data are measured and analyzed to determine when tissue is stiffer than it should be, often a sign that it is unhealthy.

In addition to biopsies, doctors often make disease diagnoses by feeling the skin and tissue surrounding an organ with their fingers to determine the level of elasticity (a process called palpation). The goal with MRE is to eliminate the need for painful biopsies and offer a sort of virtual palpation that could even be used to examine organs including the heart and the brain, which doctors cannot reach without major surgery.

Thus far, the most common application of MRE since it was first used at the Mayo Clinic in 2007 has been diagnosing liver disease. The demand for a better way of diagnosing this disease is greater than most people think, says Richard Ehman, a Mayo Graduate School professor of radiology and leader of the Mayo Clinic team that developed MRE. Nearly 170 million people worldwide have hepatitis C infections and one quarter of those cases can lead to liver disease that leaves the organ scarred and otherwise damaged, he says, adding, “The latest estimate is that in the U.S. five million people have hepatitis C infections and many people don’t even know it.”

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Tags: biopsies, degrees of elasticity, hepatitis c, hepatitis c infections, liver disease, low frequency, magnetic resonance elastography, mayo clinic, mayo graduate school, vibrating technology

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Innovation, Medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.