Safer, More Accurate Radiation Therapy for Expecting Mothers

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Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed new modeling tools that will enable more effective cancer treatment and imaging procedures for pregnant women. These finalized models from left to right represent a woman who is three mon ...
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed new modeling tools that will enable more effective cancer treatment and imaging procedures for pregnant women. These finalized models, from left to right, represent a woman who is three months, six months, and nine months pregnant. The models were plotted with the design program Rhinoceros. Credit: George Xu

Developing fetuses are extremely sensitive to radiation, which poses an impossible dilemma for expecting mothers in need of screening or treatment for cancer. Now researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new set of modeling tools that could enable safer, more accurate, and more effective radiation therapy and nuclear medicine imaging procedures for pregnant women.


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All News summaries for December 18, 2007

Patients will face delays in getting diagnostic scans due to severe shortage of imaging agents

Sep 06, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
A global shortage of medical isotopes* used in over 80% of routine diagnostic nuclear imaging procedures such as heart imaging, bone scans and some cancer detection procedures, will cause delays and cancellations to diagnostic ...

Parsing the genome of a deadly brain tumor

Sep 06, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
The most comprehensive to-date genomic analysis of a cancer – the deadly brain tumor glioblastoma multiforme – shows previously unrecognized changes in genes and provides an overall view of the missteps in the pathways that ...

How STDs increase the risk of becoming infected with HIV

Sep 05, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
Individuals who have a sexually transmitted disease (e.g., genital herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia) and women with yeast and bacterial vaginal infections have an increased risk of becoming infected with HIV if ...

Review panel criticizes Great Lakes health study

Sep 05, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
(AP) -- Substandard science has hurt a federal agency's seven-year effort to document possible links between industrial pollution and health problems in the Great Lakes region, an independent review panel said Friday.

Pill that boosts productivity gaining favor, raising concerns among medical ethicists

Sep 05, 2008 | User rating: not rated yet
In a place like Silicon Valley, where career prospects often hinge on a person's intelligence and ability to work hellishly long hours, "brain doping" probably was inevitable.