[Imaging the brain, from the cell to the organ].

Brain imaging has progressed over the centuries, from prehistory (surgical and sculptural empiricism), through the Middle Ages (dissection and drawings), the Renaissance (printing) and the 18th century (Spallanzani and ultrasounds), to the 19th century and the discovery of piezoelectricity by the Curie brothers and X-rays by Röntgen in 1895. The head had finally become transparent! The microscope was used by Ramon Y Cajal for histological and neuropathological brain studies. Marie Curie's discovery of radioisotopes paved the way for advances in in vivo neurophysiology.

Endocrine pancreatic tumors in von Hippel-Lindau disease: clinical, histological, and genetic features.

Objectives: Endocrine pancreatic tumors (EPTs) in von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease pose difficult management problems. We aimed to assess (1) the accuracy of somatostatin receptor scintigraphy, (2) histological features with focus on malignancy and genotype-phenotype correlations, and (3) prognosis of VHL-EPT.

Methods: Thirty-five patients with EPT-VHL (20 women; median age, 37 years) from 29 families were studied.

Biomarker-based strategy for screening right ventricular dysfunction in patients with non-massive pulmonary embolism.

Objective: To evaluate the usefulness of B-type natriuretic peptide and troponin I measurements in predicting right ventricular dysfunction (RVD) in non-massive pulmonary embolism.

Design: Prospective observational study.

Setting: University-affiliated emergency unit, cardiology and pneumology departments.

Resolution of homonymous visual field loss documented with functional magnetic resonance and diffusion tensor imaging.

A 68-year-old man developed right homonymous hemianopic paracentral scotomas from acute infarction of the left extrastriate area. He was studied over the ensuing 12 months with visual fields, conventional MRI, functional MRI (fMRI), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). As the visual field defect became smaller, fMRI demonstrated progressively larger areas of cortical activation.

[The visual pathways, from anatomical MRI to physiological with (f)MRI and tractography with diffusion tensor MRI (DTMRI)].

Advances in MRI technology have led to a better knowledge of visual pathways (1984-2004), with a new descriptive anatomy and functional model. The authors first describe the technical development of MRI over the last thirty years, then describe and illustrate the new descriptive anatomy. Cephalic MRI reveals brain structures that were previously invisible, on different encephalic planes, in the optic pathways, horizontally from the cornea to the calcarin fissure (neuro-ocular plane (NOP), oblique trans-hemispheric neuro-ocular (OTNOP) and neuro-opto-tractal planes (NOTP)), in their orthogonal orientation upon the oculomotor pathways: head and axonal optic nerve pack (visual deutoneurons in their meninges), optic tracts, lateral geniculate bodies, optic radiations and the calcarian fissure.