New Medical Imaging, Physics, Medical Need and Commercial Viability

Successful medical diagnostic imaging tools satisfy three criteria; they produce useful information, they fulfill a diagnostic need and are financially viable. The present need is the development of more diagnostic modalities that display changes in the dynamic anatomy and function, “how things move or work, not just how things look”. Bringing compartmentalized modalities together in a complimentary, real time, combined way could produce images with sensitivity and specificity that a single mode cannot offer alone. Conceivably, a combined magnetic resonance imaging/computerized tomography (MRI/CT) system with an added blend of modalities such as electrocardiographs, nerve conduction studies and electroencephalographs, all on the same platform, all performed simultaneously, with the images combined and analyzed together, could overcome the limitations of individual tests.