Preliminary Development of an MRI Atlas for Application to Cleft Care: Findings and Future Recommendations.

Objective: To introduce a highly innovative imaging method to study the complex velopharyngeal (VP) system and introduce the potential future clinical applications of a VP atlas in cleft care.

Design: Four healthy adults participated in a 20-min dynamic magnetic resonance imaging scan that included a high-resolution T2-weighted turbo-spin-echo 3D structural scan and five custom dynamic speech imaging scans. Subjects repeated a variety of phrases when in the scanner as real-time audio was captured.

Radiologists Help Each Other to Improve Efficiency by Decreasing the Time to Look Up a Patient's Relevant Clinical History in the Electronic Medical Record.

The study aims to prove that it takes less time to look up relevant clinical history from an electronic medical record (EMR) if the information is already provided in a specific space in the EMR by a fellow radiologist. Patients with complex oncological and surgical histories need frequent imaging, and every time a radiologist may spend a significant amount of time looking up the same clinical information as their peers. In collaboration with ACMIO and Radiant Epic team, a space labeled "Specialty Comments" was added to the SNAPSHOT of patient's chart in EMR.

A Midsagittal-View Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of the Growth and Involution of the Adenoid Mass and Related Changes in Selected Velopharyngeal Structures.

Purpose: The adenoids, or pharyngeal tonsils, consist of a pad of lymphoid tissue, located on the posterior pharyngeal wall of the nasopharynx. During childhood, the adenoid pad serves as a contact site for the soft palate to assist with velopharyngeal closure during oral speech. During adenoidal involution, most children are able to maintain appropriate velopharyngeal closure necessary for normal speech resonance.

Intratumoral talimogene laherparepvec injection with concurrent preoperative radiation in patients with locally advanced soft-tissue sarcoma of the trunk and extremities: phase IB/II trial.

Background: Soft-tissue sarcomas (STS) in the extremities and trunk treated with standard-of-care preoperative external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) followed by surgical resection are associated with local and distant relapses. In preclinical studies, oncolytic virotherapy in sarcoma has demonstrated antitumor effects via direct intratumoral oncolysis and cytotoxic T-cell-mediated immune responses. Talimogene laherparepvec (TVEC) is a replication-competent, immune-enhanced, oncolytic herpes simplex virus type 1 engineered for intratumoral injection; it has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of locally advanced and metastatic melanoma.

Identifying Predictors of Levator Veli Palatini Muscle Contraction During Speech Using Dynamic Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to identify predictors of levator veli palatini (LVP) muscle shortening and maximum contraction velocity in adults with normal anatomy. Method Twenty-two Caucasian English-speaking adults with normal speech and resonance were recruited. Participants included 11 men and 11 women ( = 22.

Growth Effects on Velopharyngeal Anatomy From Childhood to Adulthood.

Purpose The observed sexual dimorphism of velopharyngeal structures among adult populations has not been observed in the young child (4- to 9-year-old) population. The purpose of this study was to examine the age at which sexual dimorphism of velopharyngeal structures become apparent and to examine how growth trends vary between boys and girls. Method Static 3-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging velopharyngeal data were collected among 202 participants ranging from 4 to 21 years of age.

Morphology of the Musculus Uvulae In Vivo Using MRI and 3D Modeling Among Adults With Normal Anatomy and Preliminary Comparisons to Cleft Palate Anatomy.

Purpose: To investigate the musculus uvulae morphology in vivo in adults with normal velopharyngeal anatomy and to examine sex and race effects on the muscle morphology. We also sought to provide a preliminary comparison of musculus uvulae morphology in adults with normal velopharyngeal anatomy to adults with repaired cleft palate.

Methods: Three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging data and Amira 5.

Effects of Surgical Intervention and Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Therapy on Velopharyngeal Structure and Function: A Case Report.

Changes to the velum and velopharyngeal muscles following Furlow double-opposing Z-plasty in a 7-year-old female with submucous cleft palate and velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD) were evaluated. Perceptual, instrumental (ie, nasometry and aerodynamic pressure flow), and research magnetic resonance imaging analyses were used during pre- and postsurgical time points at a university research clinic. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy was trialed following a failed surgery for residual VPD in the patient.

Can Dynamic MRI Be Used to Accurately Identify Velopharyngeal Closure Patterns?

Background: Dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been proposed as a non-invasive, child-friendly, reproducible, and repeatable imaging method providing a 3-dimensional view of the velopharyngeal structures and function during speech. However, the value of dynamic MRI as compared to imaging methods such as nasopharyngoscopy is not well understood. The aim of this study was to compare the ability of nasopharyngoscopy and dynamic MRI to accurately identify velopharyngeal closure patterns among adults without cleft palate.

Differences in the Tensor Veli Palatini Between Adults With and Without Cleft Palate Using High-Resolution 3-Dimensional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Objective: To investigate the dimensions of the tensor veli palatini (TVP) muscle in adults with and without cleft palate.

Design: Prospective study.

Participants: There were a total of 14 adult participants, 8 noncleft and 6 with cleft palate.

Variations in Velopharyngeal Structure in Adults With Repaired Cleft Palate.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in velopharyngeal structures between adults with repaired cleft palate and normal resonance and adults without cleft palate.

Design: Thirty-six English-speaking adults, including 6 adults (2 males and 4 females) with repaired cleft palate (M = 32.5 years of age, SD = 17.

Examining age, sex, and race characteristics of velopharyngeal structures in 4- to 9-year old children using magnetic resonance imaging.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to quantify the growth of the various craniofacial and velopharyngeal structures and examine sex and race effects.

Methods: Eight-five healthy children (53 White and 32 Black) with normal velopharyngeal anatomy between 4 and 9 years of age who met the inclusion criteria and successfully completed the MRI scans were included in the study.

Results: Developmental normative mean values for selected craniometric and velopharyngeal variables by race and sex are reported.

Automatic identification of hypernasality in normal and cleft lip and palate patients with acoustic analysis of speech.

Hypernasality is seen in cleft lip and palate patients who had undergone repair surgery as a consequence of velopharyngeal insufficiency. Hypernasality has been studied by evaluation of perturbation, noise measures, and cepstral analysis of speech. In this study, feature extraction and analysis were performed during running speech using six different sentences.

Modeling of oropharyngeal articulatory adaptation to compensate for the acoustic effects of nasalization.

Hypernasality is one of the most detrimental speech disturbances that lead to declines of speech intelligibility. Velopharyngeal inadequacy, which is associated with anatomic defects such as cleft palate or neuromuscular disorders that affect velopharygneal function, is the primary cause of hypernasality. A simulation study by Rong and Kuehn [J.

MDCT imaging of the stomach: advances and applications.

The stomach may be involved by a myriad of pathologies ranging from benign aetiologies like inflammation to malignant aetiologies like carcinoma or lymphoma. Multidetector CT (MDCT) of the stomach is the first-line imaging for patients with suspected gastric pathologies. Conventionally, CT imaging had the advantage of simultaneous detection of the mural and extramural disease extent, but advances in MDCT have allowed mucosal assessment by virtual endoscopy (VE).

High-frame-rate full-vocal-tract 3D dynamic speech imaging.

Purpose: To achieve high temporal frame rate, high spatial resolution and full-vocal-tract coverage for three-dimensional dynamic speech MRI by using low-rank modeling and sparse sampling.

Methods: Three-dimensional dynamic speech MRI is enabled by integrating a novel data acquisition strategy and an image reconstruction method with the partial separability model: (a) a self-navigated sparse sampling strategy that accelerates data acquisition by collecting high-nominal-frame-rate cone navigator sand imaging data within a single repetition time, and (b) are construction method that recovers high-quality speech dynamics from sparse (k,t)-space data by enforcing joint low-rank and spatiotemporal total variation constraints.

Results: The proposed method has been evaluated through in vivo experiments.

Velopharyngeal Structural and Functional Assessment of Speech in Young Children Using Dynamic Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to demonstrate a novel method for examining the velopharyngeal mechanism using static and dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the sentence-level production in young children with normal anatomy. This study examined whether velopharyngeal events occurring in the midsagittal plane are correlated to muscle events occurring along the plane of velopharyngeal closure. Adenoid involvement in velopharyngeal function was also explored.

Anthropometric Analysis of the Velopharynx and Related Craniometric Dimensions in Three Adult Populations Using MRI.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine effects of sex, race, and craniometry among three distinct racial groups of adults with normal velopharyngeal anatomy and to determine whether craniofacial structures could be used to predict velopharyngeal structures.

Methods: A total of 88 adults across three racial groups including white, black, and Asian (Japanese) participated. Magnetic resonance images were obtained using a high-resolution, three-dimensional anatomical scan.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Velar Muscle Tissue Distribution in Healthy Adults.

Objectives: To examine muscle tissue distribution along the length of the velum in living individuals using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Design: Using the three-dimensional MRI data acquired from 10 normal white adults, two area measures including the muscular area and the total velar area were obtained from 10 oblique slices running perpendicular to velar length. A polynomial regression analysis was performed where the proportion of the muscular to the total velar area was regressed on the slice numbers running along the length of the velum.

High-resolution dynamic speech imaging with joint low-rank and sparsity constraints.

Purpose: To enable dynamic speech imaging with high spatiotemporal resolution and full-vocal-tract spatial coverage, leveraging recent advances in sparse sampling.

Methods: An imaging method is developed to enable high-speed dynamic speech imaging exploiting low-rank and sparsity of the dynamic images of articulatory motion during speech. The proposed method includes: (a) a novel data acquisition strategy that collects spiral navigators with high temporal frame rate and (b) an image reconstruction method that derives temporal subspaces from navigators and reconstructs high-resolution images from sparsely sampled data with joint low-rank and sparsity constraints.

Tumor grade of clear cell renal cell carcinoma assessed by contrast-enhanced computed tomography.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the association between CT findings and Fuhrman grade of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). The study group consisted of 214 surgically proven ccRCC in 214 patients. Contrast-enhanced CT studies were retrospectively assessed for tumor size, cystic versus solid, calcification, heterogeneity of lesions, percentage of non-enhancing (necrotic) areas, and growth pattern.

Videofluoroscopic investigation of body position on articulatory positioning.

Purpose: To quantitatively examine the effects of body position on the positioning of the epiglottis, tongue, and velum at rest and during speech.

Method: Videofluoroscopic data were obtained from 12 healthy adults in the supine and upright positions at rest and during speech while the participants produced 12 VCV sequences. The effects of body position, target sounds, and adjacent sounds on structural positioning and vowel formant structure were investigated.

Sexual dimorphism of the levator veli palatini muscle: an imaging study.

Objective : Magnetic resonance imaging studies of the levator veli palatini muscle have used small numbers of subjects and have not consistently controlled for sex, race, or age. The purpose of this study was to conduct a structural assessment using a large homogeneous sample to examine the sex differences in the levator muscle morphology. Methods : Thirty white adult subjects (15 men and 15 women) were imaged using a 3 Tesla MRI system.

Using MRI for assessing velopharyngeal structures and function.

Objective: Direct visualization of the velopharynx and, in particular, the levator muscle is particularly important in the assessment of velopharyngeal function and normal speech production. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the development of a static and dynamic magnetic resonance imaging protocol for evaluation of velopharyngeal structures and function.

Methods: A high-resolution, T2-weighted turbo-spin-echo three-dimensional anatomical scan (sampling perfection with application optimized contrasts using different flip angle evolution) was used to acquire a large field of view covering the velopharyngeal anatomy.