Oh, those crazy biologists! Their MRI techniques are unstoppable. The MRI is often cited in popular media as being this magical cure-all or way to see “the exact location of love” or some such nonsense, when it is actually a limited tool with very specific applications and limitations — for example, interference from water and tissue makes it a slightly imprecise affair. Eric Ahren, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon, is working on a way to challenge some of those limitations by using fluorescent nanoparticles to label specific groups of cells, which can then be pinpointed with an incredible level of precision.
This could be an incredibly useful tool for tracking the progress of medication, among other things, for example “therapeutic cells” like in immune system boosts and stem cell therapty. If my thinking is correct (probably not) it could have serious repercussions in the neural imagery field as well. [via Eurekalert]