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Sun 2 Oct, 2005 07:45 pm
I was working on an idea for a short story, but it's medically oriented, and I haven't been hospitalized since I was 5 or something, so I don't know very well what goes on in hospitals (although I bet the people aren't nearly as attractive as they are on TV).
Anyway, I need to know some things about brain imaging. First of all, if someone did an fMRI to see what parts of the brain were working, what would a brain tumor look like? Would it look like it was consuming oxygen like the rest of a functioning brain? What if the patient were unconcious or in a coma?
Also, how common is it for a bacterial infection of any kind to cause someone to go unconcious or in a coma? What about a brain tumor?
why not check out a website like that of Scientific American. They should have an archive and a search function. I know they've done lots of work on mri images. Also try Discover magazine.
SciAm requires membership to view archived articles. I tried Google. Plug in 'mri brain tumor' for more images than you'd ever want to see.
MRI isn't fMRI
Functional MRI or fMRI is one MRI application. For diagnostic purposes, like in the case of a brain tumor, radiologists use MRI not fMRI. MRI gives you a clearer picture of how the brain structures look like. It takes some time, around 2min for a whole brain, to acquire the image; in contrast in fMRI the image is acquired in about 2s therefore you can only tell which areas have a different activity (oxygen consumption) level which isn't enough to generate a decent anatomical scan.
I don't have a clue about what the short story should look like but if you're looking for brain infections what about Cysticercosis? It's caused by a worm that is found in pork and it can go all the way up into your brain and make huge holes. Or what about the prion disease (mad cow disease)?
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