The Child Neurology Knowledge Environment

In the July 30 , 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine Tomohiro Yamashita ( Tokai University School of Medicine ) and Thomas C. Kwee, M.D. (University Medical Center Utrecht , the Netherlands) describes an MR-based approach that is capable of selectively visualizing the peripheral nervous system over long trajectories in a single examination: whole-body MR neurography.Although the brain and spinal cord are well visualized with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, peripheral nerves cannot be selectively visualized by commonly used methods, such as T1-weighted and (fat-suppressed) T2-weighted imaging, because of the similarity in signal intensities between the peripheral nerves and surrounding structures on these images. In this report they demonstrate the use of a diffusion-weighted imaging sequence to perform a whole body Magnetic Resonance (MR) Neurography in a healthy volunteer and a patient with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP).

The full text of this article can be accessed here [ Free Full Text ] : http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/361/5/538.pdf

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