Brownetobiasen8083

Ocular abnormalities occur frequently in Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA), although visual symptoms are not always reported. We evaluated a cohort of patients with FRDA to characterise the clinical phenotype and optic nerve findings as detected with optical coherence tomography (OCT). A total of 48 patients from 42 unrelated families were recruited. Mean age at onset was 13.8 years (range 4-40), mean disease duration 19.5 years (range 5-43), mean disease severity as quantified with the Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia 22/40 (range 4.5-38). All patients displayed variable ataxia and two-thirds had ocular abnormalities. Statistically significant thinning of average retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) and thinning in all but the temporal quadrant compared to controls was demonstrated on OCT. Significant RNFL and macular thinning was documented over time in 20 individuals. Disease severity and visual acuity were correlated with RNFL and macular thickness, but no association was found with disease duration. Our results highlight that FDRA is associated with subclinical optic neuropathy. This is the largest longitudinal study of OCT findings in FRDA to date, demonstrating progressive RNFL thickness decline, suggesting that RNFL thickness as measured by OCT has the potential to become a quantifiable biomarker for the evaluation of disease progression in FRDA.Most cardiac studies focus on evaluating left ventricular (LV) systolic function. However, the assessment of diastolic cardiac function is becoming more appreciated, especially with the increasing prevalence of pathologies associated with diastolic dysfunction like heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Diastolic dysfunction is an indication of abnormal mechanical properties of the myocardium, characterized by slow or delayed myocardial relaxation, abnormal LV distensibility, and/or impaired LV filling. Diastolic dysfunction has been shown to be associated with age and other cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension and diabetes mellitus. In this context, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has the capability for differentiating between normal and abnormal myocardial relaxation patterns, and therefore offers the prospect of early detection of diastolic dysfunction. Although diastolic cardiac function can be assessed from the ratio between early and atrial filling peaks (E/A ratio), measuring different parameters of heart contractility during diastole allows for evaluating spatial and temporal patterns of cardiac function with the potential for illustrating subtle changes related to age, gender, or other differences among different patient populations. In this article, we review different MRI techniques for evaluating diastolic function along with clinical applications and findings in different heart diseases.Achieving high feature reproducibility while preserving biological information is one of the main challenges for the generalizability of current radiomics studies. Non-clinical imaging variables, such as reconstruction kernels, have shown to significantly impact radiomics features. DLin-KC2-DMA concentration In this study, we retrain an open-source convolutional neural network (CNN) to harmonize computerized tomography (CT) images with various reconstruction kernels to improve feature reproducibility and radiomic model performance using epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation prediction in lung cancer as a paradigm. In the training phase, the CNN was retrained and tested on 32 lung cancer patients' CT images between two different groups of reconstruction kernels (smooth and sharp). In the validation phase, the retrained CNN was validated on an external cohort of 223 lung cancer patients' CT images acquired using different CT scanners and kernels. The results showed that the retrained CNN could be successfully applied to external datasets with different CT scanner parameters, and harmonization of reconstruction kernels from sharp to smooth could significantly improve the performance of radiomics model in predicting EGFR mutation status in lung cancer. In conclusion, the CNN based method showed great potential in improving feature reproducibility and generalizability by harmonizing medical images with heterogeneous reconstruction kernels.We aimed to evaluate the stability of radiomic features in the liver of healthy individuals across different three-dimensional regions of interest (3D ROI) sizes in T1-weighted (T1w) and T2-weighted (T2w) images from different MR scanners. We retrospectively included 66 examinations of patients without known diseases or pathological imaging findings acquired on three MRI scanners (3 Tesla I 25 patients, 3 Tesla II 19 patients, 1.5 Tesla 22 patients). 3D ROIs of different diameters (10, 20, 30 mm) were drawn on T1w GRE and T2w TSE images into the liver parenchyma (segment V-VIII). We extracted 93 radiomic features from the different ROIs and tested features for significant differences with the Mann-Whitney-U (MWU)-test. The MWU-test revealed significant differences for most second- and higher-order features, indicating a systematic difference dependent on the ROI size. The features mean, median, root mean squared (RMS), 10th percentile, and 90th percentile were not significantly different. We also assessed feature robustness to ROI size variation with overall concordance correlation coefficients (OCCCs). OCCCs across the different ROI-sizes for mean, median, and RMS were excellent (>0.90) in both sequences on all three scanners. These features, therefore, seem robust to ROI-size variation and suitable for radiomic studies of liver MRI.This research compared the incidence of adjacent segment pathology (ASP) between anterior interbody lumbar fusion (ALIF) treatment and transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) treatment. Seventy patients were included in this retrospective study 30 patients received ALIF treatment, and 40 patients received TLIF treatment at a single medical center between 2011 and 2020 with a follow-up of at least 12 months. The outcomes were radiographic adjacent segment pathology (RASP) and clinical adjacent segment pathology (CASP). The mean follow-up period was 42.10 ± 22.61 months in the ALIF group and 56.20 ± 29.91 months in the TLIF group. Following single-level lumbosacral fusion, ALIF is superior to TLIF in maintaining lumbar lordosis, whereas the risk of adjacent instability in the ALIF group is significantly higher. Regarding ASP, the incidence of overall RASP and CASP did not differ significantly between ALIF and TLIF groups.This report describes the significance of the kinetic parameters (k-values) obtained from the analysis of dynamic positron emission tomography (PET) scans using the Hawkins model describing the pharmacokinetics of sodium fluoride ([18F]NaF) to understand bone physiology. Dynamic [18F]NaF PET scans may be useful as an imaging biomarker in early phase clinical trials of novel drugs in development by permitting early detection of treatment-response signals that may help avoid late-stage attrition.This paper presents the application of ciprofloxacin as a biologically active molecule (vector) for delivering diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals to the sites of bacterial infection. Ciprofloxacin-based radioconjugates containing technetium-99m or gallium-68 radionuclides were synthesised, and their physicochemical (stability, lipophilicity) and biological (binding study to Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) properties were investigated. Both the tested radiopreparations met the requirements for radiopharmaceuticals, and technetium-99m-labelled ciprofloxacin turned out to be a good radiotracer for the tomography of diabetic foot syndrome using SPECT.

To evaluate multiphase low kV computed tomography (CT) imaging of the abdomen with reduced contrast media (CM) dose using different injection protocols.

Two injection protocols were evaluated for use with low kV (80 kV) multiphase abdominal imaging in comparison to the standard procedure acquired at 120 kV (500 mgI/kg; 5 mL/s). This evaluation was conducted in a highly standardized animal study (5 Goettingen minipigs). The low kV protocols consisted of (a) a single-flow (SF) injection with 40% reduced CM dose and injection rate (300 mgI/kg; 3 mL/s) and (b) a DualFlow (DF) injection protocol consisting of 60%/40% contrast to saline ratio administered at 5 mL/s. Dynamic CT was first performed within representative liver regions to determine optimal contrast phases, followed by evaluation of the three protocols in multiphase abdominal CT imaging. The evaluation criteria included contrast enhancement (CE) of abdominal organs and vasculature.

The 80 kV DF injection protocol showed similar CE of the abdominaltage in abdominal multiphase low kV CT imaging. The data suggest that the DF approach allows the use of predefined injection protocols and adaption of the contrast to saline ratio to an individualized kV setting and yields the potential for patient-individualized CM adaption.(1) Background Dural arteriovenous fistulas (DAVF) represent a rare acquired intracranial vascular malformation, with a variety of clinical signs and symptoms, which make their diagnosis difficult. Intracranial hemorrhage is one of the most serious clinical manifestations. In this paper the authors' goal was to verify the accuracy and utility of contrast-enhanced brain CT angiography (CTA) for the identification and the characterization of dural arteriovenous fistulas (DAVFs) in patients who presented with brain hemorrhage compared to 3D digital subtraction angiography (3D DSA); (2) a retrospective study of 26 patients with DAVFs who presented with intracranial hemorrhage to our institution was performed. The information reviewed included clinical presentation, location and size of hemorrhage, brain CTA and 3D DSA findings; (3) results 61% (16/26) of DAVFs were identified by CTA. The vast majority of patients were male (69%, 18/26) and the most common presenting symptom was sudden onset headache. All DAVFs had cortical venous drainage and about one-third were associated with a venous varix. The most common location was tentorial (73%, 19/26); (4) conclusions CTA can represent a valid alternative diagnostic method to 3D DSA for the study of DAVF in the initial and preliminary diagnostic approach, especially in emergency situations. In fact, it represents a fast, inexpensive, non-invasive and above all, easily accessible and available diagnostic technique, unlike DSA or MRI, allowing to provide information necessary for the identification, classification and treatment planning of DAVFs.Childhood absence epilepsy (CAE) is a common pediatric generalized epileptic syndrome. Although it is traditionally considered as a benign self-limited condition, the apparent benign nature of this syndrome has been revaluated in recent years. This is mainly due to the increasing evidence that children with CAE can present invalidating neuropsychological comorbidities that will affect them up to adulthood. Moreover, a percentage of affected children can develop drug-resistant forms of CAE. The purpose of this review is to summarize the most recent studies and new concepts concerning CAE treatment, in particular concerning drug-resistant forms of CAE. A Pubmed search was undertaken to identify all articles concerning management and treatment of CAE, including articles written between 1979 and 2021. Traditional anticonvulsant therapy of CAE that is still in use is based on three antiepileptic drugs ethosuximide which is the drug of choice, followed by valproic acid and lamotrigine. In the case of first line treatment failure, after two monotherapies it is usual to start a bi-therapy.