Multimodal control of neck muscles for vestibular mediated head oscillation damping during walking: a pilot study.

Purpose: It is still in question whether head oscillation damping during walking forms a part of the vestibular function. The anatomical pathway from the vestibular system to the neck muscles via the medial vestibulospinal tract (MVST) is well known but there is a lack of knowledge of the exact influence and modulation of each other in daily life activities.

Methods: (I) We fixed a head-neck unit of a human cadaver specimen in a steal frame to determine the required pitch-torque for a horizontal head position.

Peripheral Vestibular Disorders: An Epidemiologic Survey in 70 Million Individuals.

Background: Dizziness is a common complaint in medicine. Nevertheless, there is a lack of valid data concerning the age and gender distribution of dizziness disorders within a larger population. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to undertake a representative epidemiological survey that examines all age groups of an entire population and describes the age and gender distribution of the most common peripheral vestibular disorders.

A spherical harmonics intensity model for 3D segmentation and 3D shape analysis of heterochromatin foci.

The genome is partitioned into regions of euchromatin and heterochromatin. The organization of heterochromatin is important for the regulation of cellular processes such as chromosome segregation and gene silencing, and their misregulation is linked to cancer and other diseases. We present a model-based approach for automatic 3D segmentation and 3D shape analysis of heterochromatin foci from 3D confocal light microscopy images.

3D morphometry using automated aortic segmentation in native MR angiography: an alternative to contrast enhanced MRA?

Introduction: Native-MR angiography (N-MRA) is considered an imaging alternative to contrast enhanced MR angiography (CE-MRA) for patients with renal insufficiency. Lower intraluminal contrast in N-MRA often leads to failure of the segmentation process in commercial algorithms. This study introduces an in-house 3D model-based segmentation approach used to compare both sequences by automatic 3D lumen segmentation, allowing for evaluation of differences of aortic lumen diameters as well as differences in length comparing both acquisition techniques at every possible location.

True four-dimensional analysis of thoracic aortic displacement and distension using model-based segmentation of computed tomography angiography.

Previous analyses of aortic displacement and distension using computed tomography angiography (CTA) were performed on double-oblique multi-planar reformations and did not consider through-plane motion. The aim of this study was to overcome this limitation by using a novel computational approach for the assessment of thoracic aortic displacement and distension in their true four-dimensional extent. Vessel segmentation with landmark tracking was executed on CTA of 24 patients without evidence of aortic disease.

Segmentation and quantification of the aortic arch using joint 3D model-based segmentation and elastic image registration.

Accurate quantification of the morphology of vessels is important for diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. We introduce a new joint segmentation and registration approach for the quantification of the aortic arch morphology that combines 3D model-based segmentation with elastic image registration. With this combination, the approach benefits from the robustness of model-based segmentation and the accuracy of elastic registration.

Model-based segmentation and motion analysis of the thoracic aorta from 4D ECG-gated CTA images.

Pathologies of the thoracic aorta can alter the shape and motion pattern of the aorta throughout the cardiac cycle. For diagnosis and therapy planning, determination of the aortic shape and motion is important. We introduce a new approach for segmentation and motion analysis of the thoracic aorta from 4D ECG-CTA images, which combines spatial and temporal tracking, motion determination by intensity-based matching, and 3D fitting of vessel models.

Combined model-based segmentation and elastic registration for accurate quantification of the aortic arch.

Accurate quantification of the morphology of vessels is important for diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. We introduce a new approach for the quantification of the aortic arch morphology that combines 3D model-based segmentation with elastic image registration. The performance of the approach has been evaluated using 3D synthetic images and clinically relevant 3D CTA images including pathologies.

Angiopoietin-2 stimulation of endothelial cells induces alphavbeta3 integrin internalization and degradation.

The angiopoietins (Ang-1 and Ang-2) have been identified as agonistic and antagonistic ligands of the endothelial receptor tyrosine kinase Tie2, respectively. Both ligands have been demonstrated to induce translocation of Tie2 to cell-cell junctions. However, only Ang-1 induces Tie2-dependent Akt activation and subsequent survival signaling and endothelial quiescence.

Hybrid spline-based multimodal registration using local measures for joint entropy and mutual information.

We introduce a new hybrid approach for spline-based elastic registration of multimodal medical images. The approach uses point landmarks as well as intensity information based on local analytic measures for joint entropy and mutual information. The information-theoretic similarity measures are computationally efficient and can be optimized independently for each voxel.