Multidetector computed tomography findings of arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia: a case report.

Arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD) is a heart muscle disorder characterized pathologically by fatty or fibrofatty replacement and electrical instability of the right ventricular myocardium. This cardiac entity leads to sudden cardiac death, syncope, recurrent ventricular tachycardia, and in some cases, heart failure in a younger population. Contrast angiography, echocardiography, radionuclide angiography, ultrafast computed tomography (CT), and cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging are techniques used to diagnose functional and morphologic characteristics of the disease.

Left ventricular spherical remodeling and apical myocardial relaxation: cardiovascular MR imaging measurement of myocardial segments.

Purpose: To prospectively evaluate left ventricular (LV) shape and regional relaxation to determine if rapid, early relaxation of the LV is lost with spherical remodeling of the LV.

Materials And Methods: This HIPAA-compliant study was approved by the institutional review board. All participants gave written informed consent.

The serum high-sensitive C reactive protein and homocysteine levels to evaluate the prognosis of acute ischemic stroke.

Ischemic stroke is one of the most common causes of death worldwide and is most often caused by thrombotic processes. We investigated the changes in hsCRP and homocysteine levels, two of these risk factors, during the acute period of ischemic stroke and evaluated the relationship between these levels and the short-term prognosis. HsCRP and homocysteine levels were measured at the 2nd, 5th, and 10th days in forty patients admitted within second of an ischemic stroke.

The role of neuron numbers of the petrosal ganglion in the determination of blood pressure: an experimental study.

Background: Baroreceptor reflexes are regulated by nerve terminals of the glossopharyngeal and vagal nerves. The body of pressure-sensitive neurons of these nerves is located in the petrosal ganglion of both nerves. We examined whether there is a relationship between the neuron numbers of the inferior ganglion of the glossopharyngeal nerve and blood pressure values.

Chemical and structural diversity in cyclooxygenase protein active sites.

A major pharmaceutical problem is designing diverse and selective lead compounds. The human genome sequence provides opportunities to discover compounds that are protein selective if we can develop methods to identify specificity determinants from sequence alone. We have analyzed sequence and structural diversity of sheep COX-1 and mouse COX-2 proteins by Active Site Profiling (ASP).

How image quality can be improved: our experience with multidetector computed tomography coronary angiography.

Purpose: The objective of this study was to investigate the factors that may influence image quality on multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) coronary angiography (CA).

Materials And Methods: Two hundred twenty-four consecutive patients (161 men and 63 women; mean age, 52 years; age range, 34-76 years) evaluated with MDCT CA were included in the study. The evaluation of the quality of the patients' images was mainly based on the contrast material phase (early phase, optimal phase, or late phase) and the level of stepladder artifact (none, acceptable, or unacceptable).

Leg flow-mediated arterial dilation in elderly patients with heart failure and normal left ventricular ejection fraction.

Background: flow-mediated arterial dilation (FMAD), an indicator of endothelial function, is reduced in patients with heart failure and reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (HFREF). Many elderly patients with heart failure exhibit a normal left ventricular ejection fraction (HFNEF). It is unknown whether FMAD is severely reduced in the elderly with HFNEF.

Remarkable anatomic anomalies of coronary arteries and their clinical importance: a multidetector computed tomography angiographic study.

Objective: An anomalous origin and course of the coronary arteries can be benign or life threatening. Recently, because of new advances in computed tomography technology, radiologists have begun to interpret the diseases of coronary arteries. We aimed to demonstrate some remarkable anomalies of coronary arteries, some of which were not shown by multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) coronary angiography previously, and to discuss the clinical importance of these anomalies.

Kinetic and equilibrium studies on the removal of acid dyes from aqueous solutions by adsorption onto activated carbon cloth.

Removal of acid dyes Acid Blue 45, Acid Blue 92, Acid Blue 120 and Acid Blue 129 from aqueous solutions by adsorption onto high area activated carbon cloth (ACC) was investigated. Kinetics of adsorption was followed by in situ UV-spectroscopy and the data were treated according to pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order and intraparticle diffusion models. It was found that the adsorption process of these dyes onto ACC follows the pseudo-second-order model.

Minimum reliable scale selection in 3D.

Multiscale analysis is often required in image processing applications because image features are optimally detected at different levels of resolution. With the advance of high-resolution 3D imaging, the extension of multiscale analysis to higher dimensions is necessary. This paper extends an existing 2D scale selection method, known as the minimum reliable scale, to 3D volumetric images.

An improved analytical model for CT dose simulation with a new look at the theory of CT dose.

Gagne [Med. Phys. 16, 29-37 (1989)] has previously described a model for predicting the sensitivity and dose profiles in the slice-width (z) direction for CT scanners.

QSAR modeling of mono- and bis-quaternary ammonium salts that act as antagonists at neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors mediating dopamine release.

Back-propagation artificial neural networks (ANNs) were trained on a dataset of 42 molecules with quantitative IC50 values to model structure-activity relationships of mono- and bis-quaternary ammonium salts as antagonists at neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR) mediating nicotine-evoked dopamine release. The ANN QSAR models produced a reasonable level of correlation between experimental and calculated log(1/IC50) (r2=0.76, r(cv)2=0.

Supervised self-organizing maps in drug discovery. 2. Improvements in descriptor selection and model validation.

The modeling of nonlinear descriptor-target relationships is a topic of considerable interest in drug discovery. We, herein, continue reporting the use of the self-organizing map-a nonlinear, topology-preserving pattern recognition technique that exhibits considerable promise in modeling and decoding these relationships. Since simulated annealing is an efficient tool for solving optimization problems, we combined the supervised self-organizing map with simulated annealing to build high-quality, highly predictive quantitative structure-activity/property relationship models.

Effects of trimetazidine on lipid peroxidation, antioxidant enzyme activities and plasma brain natriuretic peptide levels in patients with chronic cor pulmonale.

An oxidant/antioxidant imbalance in favour of oxidants appears to occur in chronic cor pulmonale (CCP). Oxidative stress could also be a critical event in the pathogenesis of this condition. Trimetazidine (TMZ) has antioxidant properties and may affect the utilization of oxygen radicals.

Supervised self-organizing maps in drug discovery. 1. Robust behavior with overdetermined data sets.

The utility of the supervised Kohonen self-organizing map was assessed and compared to several statistical methods used in QSAR analysis. The self-organizing map (SOM) describes a family of nonlinear, topology preserving mapping methods with attributes of both vector quantization and clustering that provides visualization options unavailable with other nonlinear methods. In contrast to most chemometric methods, the supervised SOM (sSOM) is shown to be relatively insensitive to noise and feature redundancy.

Adsorption of phthalic acid and its esters onto high-area activated carbon-cloth studied by in situ UV-spectroscopy.

The adsorption behavior of phthalic acid and its three esters dimethyl phthalate, diethyl phthalate and diallyl phthalate onto high-area activated carbon-cloth was studied by in situ UV-spectroscopic technique. The effect of ionization of phthalic acid on its adsorption was examined by carrying out the adsorption process in three media; water, 1 M H(2)SO(4) and 0.005 M NaOH.

Adsorption of benzoic acid onto high specific area activated carbon cloth.

The adsorption of benzoic acid from aqueous solution onto high area carbon cloth at different pH values has been studied. Over a period of 125 min the adsorption process was found to follow a first-order kinetics and the rate constants were determined for the adsorption of benzoic acid at pH 2.0, 3.

Genetic algorithms and self-organizing maps: a powerful combination for modeling complex QSAR and QSPR problems.

Modeling non-linear descriptor-target activity/property relationships with many dependent descriptors has been a long-standing challenge in the design of biologically active molecules. In an effort to address this problem, we couple the supervised self-organizing map with the genetic algorithm. Although self-organizing maps are non-linear and topology-preserving techniques that hold great potential for modeling and decoding relationships, the large number of descriptors in typical quantitative structure-activity relationship or quantitative structure-property relationship analysis may lead to spurious correlation(s) and/or difficulty in the interpretation of resulting models.

Identification of the culprit artery involved in inferior wall acute myocardial infarction using electrocardiographic criteria.

We tested whether particular electrocardiogram (ECG) changes can identify the right coronary (RCA) or left circumflex (LCX) artery as the responsible vessel in inferior wall acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in 73 patients. A standard 12-lead ECG was performed within 6 h of onset of chest pain. Coronary angiography was performed between 1 week and 6 weeks after the infarction.

Emission tuned-aperture computed tomography: a novel approach to scintimammography.

Unlabelled: Emission tuned-aperture computed tomography (ETACT) is a new approach to acquiring and processing scintimammography data. A gamma camera with a pinhole collimator is used to acquire projections of the radionuclide distribution within the breast. Fiducial markers are used to reconstruct these projections into tomographic slices.

[Automatic, implantible cardioverter-defibrillator in a patient with chronic Chagas cardiopathy and sustained ventricular tachycardia].

We studied a 48 years old woman, with chronic Chagasic cardiopathy, manifested with cardiomegaly, heart failure and syncope, due to a sustained ventricular tachycardia (SVT) of two different configurations (left bundle branch block and right bundle branch block). During electrophysiological testing, both types of ventricular tachycardia were reproduced. Successful ablation therapy of the right branch of His was performed due to suspicion of the bundle branch reentrant tachycardia, with a left bundle branch block.