This is an interesting discussion. I think the turf battle with neuroradiology is very interesting--particularly in the setting of the large turf battle between cardiology and radiology over cardiac CT's and MRI's. Clearly, neurologists are far better than a general radiologist in reading head CT's and MR's. The question is simply whether neurologists, once trained by a neuroimaging fellowship, should be allowed to be neuroradiologists or not. The main argument against neurologists reading their own films is that if they don't do neuroradiology full-time they are more liable to make mistakes. I think that is ridiculous, and in fact the opposite of what is likely to happen where neurologists (assuming they receive dedicated training via a neuroimaging fellowship) are more likely to accurately interpret an image because they can now correlate it with clinical data appropriately--which radiologists are not as well trained to do.
Personally, I think that nuclear imaging will explode in about 10 years. PET might find substantiated use in deciding when to operate/intervene on patient with cerebrovascular problems. FMRI will likely be used more and more in the diagnosis of movement and cognitive disorders. Most importantly, however, will be the advent of nanoparticles which will allow completely new methods to image, intervene, and follow patients with various neurological diseases. Neurologists should get into "nanoimaging" and make this their turf, because in 20 years, it will be the new revolution in vascular medicine, if not many other areas as well...
B
