AIM Medical Imaging’s Dr. Raj Attariwala was one of only two Canadian researchers present at State-of-the-Art Molecular Imaging in Cancer Biology and Therapy–the American Association for Cancer Research/Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging’s joint conference in San Diego over Feb. 27 – Mar. 2, 2013.
Dr. Attariwala’s presentation, co-authored by AIM’s MRI technologist Wayne Picker, was entitled ‘Whole Body Diffusion 
MRI: A Quantifiable Technique to Improve Lesion Detection, Tumor Staging and Assess Response to Therapy’. The presentation focused on Diffusion Weighted Imaging with background signal suppression (DWIBS), the functional MRI technique AIM uses that is able to assess changes in the tissue microenvironment at a cellular level.
One of the keynote speakers at the conference, Dr. Douglas Hanahan, is the author of the groundbreaking work Hallmarks of Cancer: The Next Generation. Hanahan’s paper outlines six hallmarks of human tumor development which serve to help organize and streamline the complexities of the many variables in early cancer detection.
One of Hanahan’s most important findings is the dicovery that chemotherapy is effective only in the early stages of cancer. Cancerous tumor cells are able to adapt in order to resist chemo treatments; thus, another reason why it is so imperative that a disease like cancer is identified as early as possible.