A decomposition-based CT reconstruction formulation for reducing blooming artifacts.

Cardiac computed tomography represents an important advancement in the ability to assess coronary vessels. The accuracy of these non-invasive imaging studies is limited, however, by the presence of calcium, since calcium blooming artifacts lead to an over-estimation of the degree of luminal narrowing. To address this problem, we have developed a unified decomposition-based iterative reconstruction formulation, where different penalty functions are imposed on dense objects (i.

Adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction technique for radiation dose reduction in chest CT: a pilot study.

Purpose: To compare lesion detection and image quality of chest computed tomographic (CT) images acquired at various tube current-time products (40-150 mAs) and reconstructed with adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction (ASIR) or filtered back projection (FBP).

Materials And Methods: In this Institutional Review Board-approved HIPAA-compliant study, CT data from 23 patients (mean age, 63 years ± 7.3 [standard deviation]; 10 men, 13 women) were acquired at varying tube current-time products (40, 75, 110, and 150 mAs) on a 64-row multidetector CT scanner with 10-cm scan length.

Abdominal CT: comparison of adaptive statistical iterative and filtered back projection reconstruction techniques.

Purpose: To compare image quality and lesion conspicuity on abdominal computed tomographic (CT) images acquired with different x-ray tube current-time products (50-200 mAs) and reconstructed with adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction (ASIR) and filtered back projection (FBP) techniques.

Materials And Methods: Twenty-two patients (mean age, 60.1 years ± 7.

Trends in the use and role of biomarkers in phase I oncology trials.

Purpose: There has been interest in using biomarkers that aid the evaluation of new anticancer agents. We evaluated trends in the use of biomarkers and their contribution to the main goals of phase I trials.

Experimental Design: We did a systematic review of abstracts submitted to the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting from 1991 to 2002 and the publications related to these abstracts.

Using imaging biomarkers to accelerate drug development and clinical trials.

There is increasing evidence that human medical imaging can help answer key questions that arise during the drug development process. Imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography and positron emission tomography can offer significant insights into the bioactivity, pharmacokinetics and dosing of drugs, in addition to supporting registration applications. In this review, examples from oncology, neurology, psychiatry, infectious diseases and inflammatory diseases are used to illustrate the role imaging can play.

Imaging angiogenesis: applications and potential for drug development.

Recognition of the importance of angiogenesis to tumor growth and metastasis has led to efforts to develop new drugs that are targeted to angiogenic vasculature. Clinical trials of these agents are challenging, both because there is no agreed upon method of establishing the correct dosage for drugs whose mechanism of action is not primarily cytotoxic and because of the long time it takes to determine whether such drugs have a clinical effect. Therefore, there is a need for rapid and effective biomarkers to establish drug dosage and monitor clinical response.