Acellular bioscaffolds redirect cardiac fibroblasts and promote functional tissue repair in rodents and humans with myocardial injury.

Coronary heart disease is a leading cause of death. Tissue remodeling and fibrosis results in cardiac pump dysfunction and ischemic heart failure. Cardiac fibroblasts may rebuild damaged tissues when prompted by suitable environmental cues.

Semiautomatic vessel wall detection and quantification of wall thickness in computed tomography images of human abdominal aortic aneurysms.

Purpose: Quantitative measurements of wall thickness in human abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) may lead to more accurate methods for the evaluation of their biomechanical environment.

Methods: The authors describe an algorithm for estimating wall thickness in AAAs based on intensity histograms and neural networks involving segmentation of contrast enhanced abdominal computed tomography images. The algorithm was applied to ten ruptured and ten unruptured AAA image data sets.