CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Asthma makes breathing difficult for more than 22 million Americans. There's no cure, but new research is looking at asthma patients in a whole new way.
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A little exercise is all it takes to remind Quinn Taylor of the asthma he has lived with since childhood.
"I can feel a little bit of tightness in my chest just from kicking around the soccer ball," Taylor told Ivanhoe.
Today, Taylor is volunteering to test a new imaging technique that helps radiologists see inside his lungs like never before.
"We get a better feel for what's going on within the lungs, something that is not really possible with other techniques at this point," Eduard de Lange, M.D., a radiologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va., told Ivanhoe.
The new method combines MRI scans with a harmless gas called helium-3. It's not the helium found in balloons, but a special gas that is visible inside the lungs when inhaled during an MRI scan.
"We can see what parts of the lungs are blocked, [which] airways are blocked and which parts of the lungs ventilate," Dr. de Lange said.
The images show in the healthy lung how helium-3 atoms move and completely fill the lungs. In asthma patients, areas of the lungs are blocked so the atoms may not fill the lung at all.
Doctors hope the technique will help develop new ways to prevent, treat and cure asthma. Thanks to volunteers like Taylor, others may soon breathe easier.
The American Association of Physicists in Medicine contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.
Eduard E. de Lange, M.D
Professor of Radiology
University of Virginia Health Sciences Center
Charlottesville, VA 22908
(434) 982 6030
delange@virginia.edu
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