cz -

Sorry to be late here, but yesterday, by coincidence, I had a brain MRI with and without contrast on a Tesla 3 machine, which is supposed to be able to measure the corticol thickness of the/my anterior insula (AI). See, "The Brain in Chronic CRPS Pain: Abnormal Gray-White Matter Interactions in Emotional and Autonomic Regions," Geha PY, Baliki MN, Harden RN, Bauer WR, Parrish TB, Apkarian AV, Neuron 2008; 60: 570-581, full text at http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl...aliki_etal.pdf.

But why I write is that just as the constrast was being pushed into my arm, I was bombarded with a rapid-fire high-pitched "pinging jackhammer" sound, which was definately a first for me. I later asked what it was, and found out that it's an actual real-time blood perfusion test, previously the province of PET scans and their accompanying isotopes. See, "Chronic Pain with Beneficial Response to Electroconvulsive Therapy and Regional Cerebral Blood Flow Changes Assesed by Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography," Fukui S, Shigemori S, Yoshimura A, Nosaka S, Reg Anesth Pain Med. 2002; 27(2): 211-213, full text at http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl..._Yoshimura.pdf. (And all this at a university hospital where both the facility and the radiologist are providers under just about any insurance coverage.) And just where do we cross over into fMRI territory?

Do you know by any chance if you had a profusion (rCBF) study done? If not, you might want to think about adding it to the list.

Lastly, while it appears that only NYU has a Tesla 7 machine available for clinical use (the rest are all in departmental labs) the University of Illinois at Chicago has been apparently testing a 9.4 machine for a couple of years, that is supposedly going to be able to image brain metabolism at the cellular level. And while there doesn't appear to be independent verification readily avilable for all of the information posted on this site, it makes the thing sound like quite a toy: http://thefutureofthings.com/pod/113...ngest-mri.html

Mike