Clinical Brain MR Imagings in Taiwan: Practice and Research

Abstract

Since the installation of the first middle-field magnetic resonance (MR) scanner at Tai-Chung in 1989, most neuroradiologists can now easily diagnose complicated central nervous system diseases in a single MR examination. Thanks to the insurance reimbursement coverage that includes the expensive MR exams for clinical service, MR imaging study served as routine examinations has become blooming in most hospitals in this country. Up to now there are more than 60 MR scanners in this island and most of the magnets are of high-field (1.5 Tesla). Current high-field magnets are capable of running echoplanar imaging, including diffusion and perfusion images, and MR spectroscopy, all of which are ideal tools for clinical researches. This lecture features the state- of-art clinical MR imaging on brain study, introduces its current status in clinical neurological service, and discusses the possible imaging role on brain researches. The lecture will go more detail on two common neurological diseases, i.e. the cerebral ischemic stroke and glioma, to demonstrate the importance of imaging research that ultimately have tremendous impacts on clinical management of the patients. Other MR researches including cerebral spinal fluid motion, MR spectroscopy, functional MR imaging, and fetal brain imaging, to name a few, are currently being actively operated on at Tri-Service General Hospital and will be briefly reviewed in this talk.