Current Medical Imaging - Volume 2, Issue 4, 2006

Portal vein embolization (PVE) has become an important tool in the preoperative management of select patients prior to major hepatic resection. PVE redirects portal flow to the intended remnant liver to induce hypertrophy of the nondiseased portion of the liver and thereby may reduce complications and shorten hospital stays after surgery. This article reviews the rationale and existing literature on PVE, including the me Read More

After we briefly review representative analytic and iterative reconstruction algorithms for X-ray computed tomography (CT), we address the need for faster reconstruction by parallel computing techniques. For a decent, a conebeam reconstruction usually takes hours on a regular PC, since most of algorithms take more than 60 iterations even longer. In order to speedup the performance, people introduce various accelerati Read More

Reconstruction of vascular trees from digital diagnostic images is a challenging task in the development of tools for simulation and procedural planning for clinical use. Improvements in quality and resolution of acquisition modalities are constantly increasing the fields of application of computer assisted techniques for vascular modeling and a lot of Computer Vision and Computer Graphics research groups are currently Read More

Vasculitis is inflammation of blood vessel walls, which produces dysfunction in both the peripheral and central nervous system (CNS). In CNS, cerebral ischemia is the major cause for neurological manifestations. Vasculitis affecting the CNS alone is referred to as primary angiitis of the CNS. The pathogenesis of vasculitis includes different immunological mechanisms. Diagnosis of CNS vasculitis depends on a combination of cli Read More

In the past, many aspects concerning specific cerebral activation patterns and cross-modal plasticity in blind subjects have been reported. Experimental data on cortical reorganization in blind subjects, using positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has revealed activation of the visual cortex related to Braille reading and tactile discrimination tasks in congenitally and Read More

Syntactic structures relate the meanings of the individual words in sentences to one another, thus allowing sentences to express propositions that can be entered into memory, used in reasoning and planning, and serve as the basis for much of human thought and expression. Syntactic structures are abstract, unique types of representations that are not found in non-humans. How the brain is organized to support syntac Read More

Bioluminescence tomography (BLT) is a new molecular imaging tool. Using a modality fusion approach, we built the first BLT prototype that combines BLI data and micro-CT and micro-MRI images for proof of concept, established a theoretical framework for BLT, and reported encouraging preliminary results. In this overview, we highlight our key results and discuss further directions.