Imaging of Tropical Diseases
The Tropical Medicine Central Resource (TMCR) at USUHS, under whose umbrella the International Registry of Tropical Imaging (IRTI) was developed, serves as a worldwide archiving and retrieval source for imaging studies involved in the diagnosis of over 70 parasitic and infectious, neoplastic and miscellaneous diseases affecting over 2 billion people in the tropical and subtropical regions of the globe.This archive has as its core the 10,000 images collected over the past 40 years by Drs. Maurice Reeder and Philip Palmer with the cooperation of radiologists and clinicians from over 30 countries.
The most important of these images are published in the 2 volume text "The Imaging of Tropical Diseases, with Epidemiological, Pathological and Clinical Correlation"(2001), 2nd ed., by Palmer and Reeder, Springer-Verlag [preview on Google Books] .
"Every effort will be made to correlate imaging examinations with whatever corresponding epidemiological, gross and microscopic pathological, and clinical information may be available for each case and each disease entity. In so doing, it may be possible to illustrate the commonalties and differences in imaging and disease patterns regarding tropical diseases of identical etiology seen in varying parts of the world. For example:
~ Why should schistosomiasis mansoni cause inflammatory fibroid polyps in the colon in Africa and Arabia but present a Crohn-like pattern of narrowing and mucosal effacement in the Western hemisphere?
~ Why should Chagas' disease cause myocarditis in virtually all patients in Central and South America, but cause, in addition, megaesophagus and megacolon almost exclusively in Brazilians?
~ Why are certain malignancies present in a great percentage of the population in certain African villages and countries, while being almost unknown in adjacent areas?
Perhaps a multidisciplinary approach can shed new light on these and dozens of other puzzles throughout the tropical world!"
Labels: IRTI, TMCR, tropical disease research, tropical medicine, USUHS
posted by Ann Celestine @ 10:13 AM
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