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Joan Hartman wrote: > > Joe......do you have a website url on this article....I just had an MRI to > rule out a brain tumor and when I asked MD re the PD showing up on the MRI, > he said PDd wouldn't show up on an MRI and I'd like to show him this full > article. 1.(www url): The items you refer to are my personal reviews of articles in the journal Neurology, which does have a website, but like most other journals require payment to use it. The NIH site PubMed does offer _abstracts_ of such articles free of charge, but there is usually a delay of several weeks. Your best bet is to visit a medical library as I do, and borrow copies of the articles or abstracts that you want. 2.(MRI diagnosis): Your doctor is of course right, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can show only variations in tissue density, like an x-ray. To confirm a diagnosis of PD, one must see how dopamine is distributed in the brain. That may be done by first injecting a radioactive 'tracer' chemical that looks like dopamine to the brain, and then plotting its path by means of positron-emission tomography (PET); but that is still to costly for use other than in a research project. 3.(ultrasound): The big surprise in the items I posted is that this cheap and simple technique can see inside the brain despite its bony armor, and that PD even in the early preclinical stage produces visible changes in the substantia nigra. Illustrations with the original articles are blurry just like all ultrasound images, but even a non- expert like me can see the effect. Cheers, Joe -- J. R. Bruman (818) 789-3694 3527 Cody Road Sherman Oaks, CA 91403-5013