Journal Article Critique #1
By Tamara Beck
October 3, 2009
Title of Journal Article: PET/MRI: The Blended-Modality Choice of the Future?
Title of Journal: Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
Volume: 37 Number: 2 Date: June, 2009 Page numbers: 63-71
Publishing organization: Society of Nuclear Medicine Technologists Section
I chose this article to read for several reasons. First, fusion imaging is fast becoming the standard of care in nuclear medicine. Secondly, it is related to my topic and lastly, this article provided CE credit after answering and submitting the test questions that followed the article. This article was extremely beneficial in my future studies and career since dual-modality fusion imaging is becoming more prevalent. It suggests that MRI education and training will be necessary for nuclear medicine technologist.
This article addresses another possible fusion imaging modality, PET/MRI. It includes an overview of: the history, basic physics, current and future clinical uses of MRI, basic PET imaging physics, PET/MRI concept and scanner design, and a comparison of PET/CT and PET/MRI. It is basically an informative article about PET and MRI and raises the question of blending PET/MRI as the future choice for fusion imaging.
This article introduced some new terminology and beneficial information to me. First, I learned that MRI actually was called nuclear medicine resonance (NMR) technology. It was used in research organic chemistry labs and later the word nuclear was dropped from its name. Secondly, the term functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides information by looking at blood oxygen level-dependent contrast changes. Currently it is used clinically to study brain disorders; epilepsy and stroke. Lastly, I learned the designers have overcome some of the initial challenges between the interference of the magnetic field on the PET scanner detectors. This has lead to prototype hybrid PET/MRI scanners used in research centers today.
The article covered the course topic of review of literature for fusion imaging of PET and MRI. It served as an informative article.
It was well written and easy to read for medical imaging professionals. Overall, I ranked this article very good and thought it was a very good article to serve as a teaching tool for students and teachers. It may be over the head of most patients so therefore I ranked it as only a good article for them.
The major strength of this article was the review of information regarding PET/MRI fusion imaging and raised the question of its usefulness in the future. I did not find any weaknesses.
The article provided 43 references.
