Evaluation of Vasospasm after Subarachnoid Hemorrhage by Use of Multislice Computed Tomographic Angiography

OBJECTIVE Multislice computed tomographic angiography (CTA) can provide clearer vascular images, even of the peripheral arteries, than conventional CTA. Multislice CTA was compared with digital subtraction angiography (DSA) for the detection of cerebral vasospasm in patients with acute aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) to analyze whether multislice CTA can replace DSA in the detection of vasospasm after SAH. METHODS Within 72 hours after the onset of symptoms, multislice CTA and DSA were performed in 20 patients with SAH. Multislice CTA and DSA were repeated on Day 7 to assess cerebral vasospasm. Regions of interest were established in the proximal and distal segments of the anterior and middle cerebral arteries on both multislice CTA and DSA images, and the agreement between the severity of vasospasm on multislice CTA and DSA images was statistically compared. The multislice Aquilon computed tomography system (Toshiba, Inc., Tokyo, Japan) used the following parameters: 1 mm collimation and 3.5 mm per rotation table increment (pitch, 3.5). RESULTS The degree of vasospasm as revealed by multislice CTA correlated significantly with the degree of vasospasm revealed by DSA (P < 0.0001). The agreement between the severity of vasospasm on multislice images obtained via CTA and DSA in the overall, proximal, and distal segments of the cerebral arteries was 91.6, 90.8, and 92.3%, respectively. CONCLUSION Multislice CTA can detect angiographic vasospasm after SAH with accuracy equal to that of DSA.

A SEMI-LOCALIZED ELASTIC NET FOR SURFACE RECONSTRUCTION OF OBJECTS FROM MULTISLICE IMAGES

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a prototypical problem of combinatorial optimization and, as such, it has received considerable attention from neural-network researchers seeking quick, heuristic solutions. An early stage in many computer vision tasks is the extraction of object shape from an image consisting of noisy candidate edge points. Since the desired shape will often be a closed contour, this problem can be viewed as a version of the TSP in which we wish to link only a subset of the points/cities (i.e. the "noisefree" ones). None of the extant neural techniques for solving the TSP can deal directly with this case. In this paper, we present a simple but effective modification to the (analog) elastic net of Durbin and Willshaw which shifts emphasis from global to local behavior during convergence, so allowing the net to ignore some image points. Unlike the original elastic net, this semi-localized version is shown to tolerate considerable amounts of noise. As an example practical application, we describe the extraction of "pseudo-3D" human lung outlines from multiple preprocessed magnetic resonance images of the torso. An effectiveness measure (ideally zero) quantifies the difference between the extracted shape and some idealized shape exemplar. Our method produces average effectiveness scores of 0.06 for lung shapes extracted from initial semi-automatic segmentations which define the noisefree case. This deteriorates to 0.1 when extraction is from a noisy edge-point image obtained fully-automatically using a feedforward neural network.

Non-Invasive Imaging Technologies in Drug Safety Evaluation: Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Rats to Assess Theophyline-Induced Testes Toxicity

Non-invasive imaging technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging are commonly used in clinical practice. in an experimental setting, it is possible to decrease field of view and pixel size, thereby increase image resolution. We tested this magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM) technique in a theopln lline-induced rat model of reproductive toxicity. The goal of this work was to study the sensitivity of MRM to detect or predict changes in tissue proton (i.e. water) characteristics, and confirm those findings with histology.Male Sprague-Dawley rats were fed either a control or theophylline (1.3-dimethylxanthine. 8000 ppm) diet. Experimental groups of days 8. 16. 24. and 32 animals were imaged with MRM (Figure 1) and tissue morphology confirmed with histology (Figure 2).Tl-weighted images (with and without gadolinium-DTPA contrast. Magnevist®) and T2-weighted images were acquired at 2 T (spin-echo multislice images. 100 μm2 pixel. 300 μm slice thickness).

Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Browning Development in `Braeburn' Apple during Controlled-atmosphere Storage under High CO2

Development of browning induced in `Braeburn' apple (Malus ×domestica Borkh.) fruit by a damaging CO2 concentration was monitored weekly using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) during a 4-week storage trial (0.5 °C, 2 kPa O2/7 kPa CO2). Discrete patches of high-intensity signal, distributed randomly throughout the fruit, were observed in multislice images of samples after 2 weeks of storage; these patches were eventually confirmed as being sites of browning reactions after dissection at the end of the trial. Subsequently (weeks 3 and 4), signal intensity at sites of incipient damage increased and patches enlarged and coalesced. After 2 weeks of storage, the extent of affected tissue, averaged across all image slices, was 1.5%, increasing to 15.9% and 21.3% after 3 and 4 weeks. The average rate at which tissue damage spread in individual slices was 0.81 (range: 0–3.70) cm2·d–1 between weeks 2 and 3, declining to 0.32 (range: 0–1.55) cm2·d–1 in the final week. Tissue damage induced under these conditions did not spread at the same rate at all locations within individual fruit, nor was it preferentially located toward the stem or calyx ends of the fruit.