Vittorio Maragliano (1878 -1944) in the history of European medicine: Grand master and pioneer of Italian radiology.

Vittorio Maragliano was born in Genoa in 1878. Fascinated since childhood by all things electric, he succeeded in installing the first radiological apparatus in 1896, only one year after the discovery of "Röntgen rays", and immediately began to make his first radioscopy observations. Having graduated from the University of Genoa in 1901 with a thesis on high-frequency currents, he continued assiduously to frequent the Department of Electrotherapy of the Medical Clinic, where he immediately became an assistant.

Qualitative and quantitative evaluation of solitary thyroid nodules with contrast-enhanced ultrasound: initial results.

To assess the feasibility of contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) of the thyroid gland and to evaluate the potential of this method for characterising solitary thyroid nodules.18 patients affected by solitary thyroid nodules (size range: 0.6 to 3.

Reversible effect of MR and ELF magnetic fields (0.5 T and 0.5 mT) on human lymphocyte activation patterns.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of magnetic fields (MF) of different intensity generated by a magnetic resonance (MR) unit (0.5 Tesla) and a double cylindrical coil (0.5 m Tesla) on human CD4(+) T cell lines.

Ultrastructural biologic effects of sonography with pulse inversion and microbubble contrast in rabbit liver.

Purpose: This prospective study was conducted to evaluate the biologic effects of microbubble destruction with pulse-inversion harmonic imaging on rabbit liver parenchyma.

Methods: The livers of 6 albino rabbits were examined sonographically by a single investigator. Three rabbits underwent contrast-enhanced sonography, with scanning starting 5 seconds after injection by using pulse-inversion harmonic imaging with a mechanical index of 1.

Benign focal liver lesions: spectrum of findings on SonoVue-enhanced pulse-inversion ultrasonography.

The prevalence of benign focal liver lesions (BFLL) is high both in the general population and in patients with known malignancies. The gray-scale ultrasound (US) technique is usually the first-line imaging modality used in the radiological workup of such lesions, but unfortunately it lacks specificity. Furthermore, Doppler examination may often be unsatisfactory owing to motion artefacts, or when small or deeply located lesions are evaluated.

Development of a low-cost DICOM-server for teaching and research purposes.

Purpose: This paper describes our experience in developing a DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) server based on widely available personal computers enabling to use X-ray digital images for teaching and scientific purposes.

Materials And Methods: The system is based on a DICOM server running on a widely used personal computer. The selected DICOM images are collected directly from the radiological equipment or from a dedicated 3D image processing workstation through a LAN connection and converted into one of the standard formats (JPEG or GIF) to allow their direct importing into multimedia presentations for teaching or scientific purposes.

Bleeding renal angiomyolipomas. CT findings.

Purpose: To describe our experience in three cases of abdominal haemorrhage caused by bleeding renal angiomyolipomas, which were studied with Computed Tomography (CT).

Materials And Methods: A retrospective study carried out at our archives identified 3 patients (aged 58.6 on average) with renal angiomyolipomas clinically manifested with acute abdomen and haemorrhage.

Breast lesion characterization with contrast-enhanced US. Work in progress.

Purpose: To characterise breast lesions on the basis of microcirculation features detected with contrast-enhanced US.

Materials And Methods: Thirty-six patients aged 42-63 years (mean age 55 years) with a single breast lesion previously detected at standard mammography were studied. All US examinations were performed using an ATL HDI 5000 ultrasound device with a 5-10 MHz linear-array transducer, before and after administration of ultrasound contrast medium Levovist (Schering(R), Berlin) was administered by bolus injection (2 ml/s) via a 20 G catheter probe.