Three-dimensional optical analysis of chest wall motion.

A method for kinematic analysis of chest wall motion is presented, based on a television-image processor that allows a three-dimensional assessment of volume change of the trunk by automatically computing the coordinates of several passive markers placed on relevant landmarks of the thorax and abdomen. The parallel computation used for the image processing allows for a real time recognition of the passive markers with the necessary accuracy. A geometric model also allows the online computation of the contribution to the chest volume by the different parts.

[Pulmonary involvement in scleroderma assessed with high-resolution computerized tomography and functional tests].

This study was aimed at investigating and analyzing lung involvement in scleroderma patients with different imaging methods, toward a rational diagnostic approach. Twenty-four patients with systemic sclerosis were examined with pulmonary function tests (PFT), spirometry and diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DLCO), chest radiography and high-resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT). Abnormal findings were present in 42% of cases on X-ray films and in 71% of cases on HRCT images.

[Cardiologic aspects of Friedreich type heredoataxia].

The authors performed ambulatory electro-vectorcardiography polycardiography and echocardiography in 18 patients with typical Friedreich's disease, and 6 patients with atypical forms of hereditary spino-cerebellar ataxia classified on e basis of the degree of neurological involvement, without clinical signs of cardiocirculatory failure. The ECG and VCG recording commonly showed appearances suggestive of myocardial "necrosis" and were of little value in the differential diagnosis between typical and atypical forms of Friedreich's ataxia. This limitation also applied to the kinetocardiogramme which was sometimes pathological confirming the echocardiographic diagnosis of symmetric LV hypertrophy and of septal hypokinesia despite normal ECG and VCG.

On some cardiological aspects of Steinert's disease (myotonic dystrophy).

The authors investigated 10 ambulant patients with myotonic dystrophy, under 40 years of age (mean 22.3 years) and free of subjective heart complaints. Not only Ecg alterations but also kinetocardiographic changes and anomalies of the systolic intervals were rarer and milder than those found in patients with other neuromyopathies, namely Friedreich's disease and Duchenne's disease.

[The evolution of cardiac impairment in Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. Electrovector-cardiographic, polycardiographic and echocardiographic aspects (author's transl)].

The Authors have submitted to an electrocardiographic, vectorcardiographic, mechanocardiographic and echocardiographic investigation 4 cases with Duchenne's disease, which had already been studied by the Authors several years before. The longitudinal study has demonstrated, above all, the striking capacity of the electrocardiographic aspects of the disease to evolve from a normal to a "pseudo-necrotic" pattern. Such evolution, among other things, provides an important argument against the interpretation that attributes the electrocardiographic and vectorcardiographic changes in the initial stages of the disease to a persistence of a QRS loop of infantile type on a genetic basis.