Medical diagnosis: brain palpation soon possible?

If there is a technical exploration of the human body that the physician practice in any medical examination to diagnose or prescribe additional tests, it is palpation. The brain, however, has the distinction of being not possible to feel without a very invasive procedure (opening of the skull) reserved for rare cases. Drawing on seismology, researchers from Inserm led by Stefan Catheline (Inserm Unit 1032 ‘Applications of Ultrasound therapy’) have developed a non-invasive method of imaging of the brain by MRI which gives the same indications as physical palpation. A term may be used for early diagnosis of brain tumours or of Alzheimer’s disease.
The Inserm researchers have managed, via MRI to detect natural brain shear waves using computational techniques borrowed from seismologists and known as ‘noise correlation.’ They were able to draw of brain elasticity image.
‘If this method can be developed in the clinic, it would be both a comfort for the patient and the doctor because today vibrating the brain is painful enough. Of course, this method will be complementary to the existing ones and the future is a multimodal medical diagnosis, ‘says Stefan Catheline, Senior Research Director Inserm author of this work.
‘Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, hydrocephalus involve changes in the hardness of brain tissue. This new technique could detect those changes and be used to prevent brain biopsies.’
This method of brain palpation could have other application areas such as the analysis of the development of neurodegenerative processes, the impact of a traumatic injury or tumour, or the response to treatment.

INSERM http://tinyurl.com/zhyjj9x