Male Speaker: CAT Scan, PET Scan, MRI, they are the medical nicknames of diagnostic tools we've come to know from our own health situations or the media. Advances in technology have improved standard tests dramatically allowing doctors to see inside our bodies like never before. Here are some ways Sharper Imaging can help promote life, prevent death and view traditional technology in a whole new way.
For expecting parents, it's one of the most exciting moments, that first glimpse of your unborn child, then you see the ultrasound and wonder.
Terrie Burklew: I don't know what I was looking at, I have no idea.
Male Speaker: At last, a diagnostic breakthrough can clear up the confusion. It's a four-dimensional ultrasound that produces spectacular images of baby in the womb.
Sally Grady: You see the tip of her nose there, the lips that she has got a curl -- she has got her lips curled. It makes the baby real to them. It's just so different than seeing the original 2D images where the technologists are trying to point out different things.
Male Speaker: The new technology gave expecting parents Terrie and Matt Burklew a sneak peek at what their baby girl looks like, and more importantly, if she is healthy.
Matt Burklew: She just looks cute, I can't go beyond that.
Male Speaker: Here is a regular ultrasound image and the same one using 4D.
Sally Gardy: You can look for abnormalities such as a cleft palate, clubfoot or a spina bifida.
Male Speaker: Doctors hope one day to use this same technology for breast and thyroid biopsies. Seeing firsthand that the little girl is the picture of health means the Burklews can concentrate on more important things like figuring out who she looks like. But sometimes, just using traditional technology in a new way can help doctors get a better blueprint of our bodies. When Rebekah Carpus had trouble swallowing X-rays and a CT scan, showed something was in her esophagus.
Rebekah Carpus: They said it could be a tumor or a cyst, he had no idea.
Dr. Faisel Jafri: The problems we've had in the past of diagnosing GI cancers has been the accuracy with which we diagnose them.
Male Speaker: That's where endoscopic ultrasound can help. The test combines two standard imaging techniques to better analyze digestive diseases. Using this technology, doctors can see inside the GI tract and through the tissue into surrounding organs.
Dr. Faisel Jafri: Look at the liver, by doing an endoscopic ultrasound you can get all the information that oncologist or a surgeon needs without doing surgery.
Male Speaker: It's meant to complement traditional tests and save patients like Rebekah from unnecessary surgery.
Rebekah Corpus: They were able to tell me that day we did not find any cancerous cells.
Male Speaker: The technology doesn't always deliver good news. In Jack Romel's case, it showed he was living with a ticking time bomb inside his stomach.
Jack Romel: They did show I had an aneurysm.
Male Speaker: An Aneurysm is a weak spot in a blood vessel that causes it to swell like a balloon.
Male Speaker2: Unfortunately, the first symptoms are the symptoms of rupture.
Male Speaker: Well, 80% of ruptures are deadly, most aneurysms are harmless.
David Vorp: So they may live well about the rest of their natural lives and die from other causes and not their aneurysm, so why repair their aneurysm if it's not needed.
Male Speaker: That's the tricky part, deciding which ones need surgery.
David Vorp: Now the typical patients will rupture at 5 centimeters, but it does not mean that all patients will.
Male Speaker: To help improve decision making, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh used 3D computer models to create virtual aneurysms.
Dr. Michael Makaroun: We will be able to tell the patient more accurately what is the risk of rupture, so we can determine what is the appropriate time that we should intervene and treat the patient.
Male Speaker: A statistical model, built from CT scans, shows the amount of stress being put on areas of the aneurysm.
David Vorp: The model shows that this is where this particular aneurysm would rupture.
Male Speaker: Since this technology is still being developed, doctors took the standard approach with Jack and operated when his reached 5 centimeters.
Jack Romel: What the hell, I didn't know about it, hell, 2000 what, you wouldn't be interviewing me right now.
Male Speaker: A thought he tries not to dwell.
In the last two decades, the number of abdominal aortic aneurysms caught early has tripled to about 200,000 a year, probably because of advances in diagnostic imaging. Doctors hope to have this new technology available to patients in the next two years.
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