AIM's medical director, head radiologist and inventor of our whole body scan, Dr. Raj Attariwala, is a star on the radio! Dr. Raj, as his patients affectionately call him, was interviewed by Ian Power for CKNW's Talk to the Experts this past Sunday, February 23, about why he set up AIM Medical Imaging, how AIM [...]
One of our patients recently asked Dr. Attariwala some great questions: When is MRI most suitable for diagnostic imaging? What tissues/areas of the body are best imaged with MRI? How does MRI compare with other imaging modalities such as CT, FDG PET and Ultrasound? MRI and Ultrasound are, wherever possible, preferable to CT and PET [...]
A new report put out by the World Health Organization presents a bleak prospect: World cancer rates are expected to rise by more than half by 2030. These findings were published in the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)'s World Cancer Report, a collaborative effort of over 250 scientists and health specialists from [...]
Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, wrote an important article for Wired Magazine in 2010 about the effect that our modern culture of distraction--specifically the Internet--is having on our brains. "When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning," [...]
Depression can have negative effects on the people who suffer from it, effects that are so far-reaching that they take a toll on their loved ones as well. While much progress has been made in recent years to lift the stigma of the disease in society's eyes, researchers--though they have made progress--are still unsure what [...]
Long has it been rumored that playing Mozart for your infant will aid in their brain development. Now, the results of a trio of MRI studies claim that musical education--especially when embarked upon at a young age--shapes and strengthens the brain for the better. According to the study, beginning a musical education before the age [...]
On October 8, the Vancouver Sun published an article reporting that a UBC-led study had cast doubt on an unproven medical theory called Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency, or CCSVI, which claims that constricted veins in the neck are the cause of Multiple Sclerosis. The article, like the study and theory that preceded it, is controversial: there is [...]
There's a good reason why composers of operas and musicals have traditionally included an overture intended to precede staged shows--and that reason is now supported by science. The overture and entr-acte, respectively the musical overviews of the first and second halves of a performance, are designed to familiarize the audience with the hooks and choruses [...]
Did you know that LA's Wilshire Boulevard has more MRI machines than the whole of British Columbia? Yes, you read that correctly: there are more MRI machines on one street in Los Angeles than in the entire province of BC. At only 6 MRI machines per 1 million people, Canada trails far behind other developed [...]
One is likely to think of a boxer's left hook or a mishap on the ski hill when the words "sports" and "head injury" appear in the same sentence, but new research suggests an essential element of the world's most popular athletic pastime may cause brain damage over time. The culprit? The ubiquitous 'header', taught to small [...]