Barley could replace barium for scanning the throat

Published June 28, 2018 This content is archived.

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An article on Futurity reports on research by Jun Xia, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Jonathan Lovell, associate professor of biomedical engineering, that showed that barley is an ideal and safe contrast agent for diagnosing swallowing disorders.

"It's really incredible. Here you have this common grain — it has been grown all over the world for thousands of years, and used to make tea, bread, beer — and we're just now finding another use for it as a contrast agent for medical imaging," Xia said.

The Department of Biomedical Engineering is a joint program of the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Read the story here.

Articles also appeared in news outlets that include Medical Xpress, Seed Quest, Analytica-World, Techsite, Bionity, Agweek, ScienMag, MedPage Today and Lab Manager Magazine.