MELBOURNE, June 19 (UPI) -- Australian scientists say they're developing the technology to create individualized brain maps that will revolutionize disease diagnosis and brain surgery.
The researchers from the Howard Florey Institute in Melbourne said neurosurgeons currently must rely on coarse maps of the brain's structure that don't allow for differences between people's brains.
They said their new brain mapping technology -- expected to be available within two or three years -- will use acquisition and analysis processes and software to provide microscopic level magnetic resonance imaging scanning of individual brains.
"Microscopic images inside the living brain will transform diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease," said University of Melbourne Associate Professor Gary Egan, the study's leader. "This technology will allow us to look at cortical gray matter and underlying white matter at a level previously only seen before in post-mortem brains."
The scientists, with collaborators from the Neuroscience Research Institute in South Korea, presented their research this week in Melbourne during the annual meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping.
