Solitary pulmonary nodules: association between signal characteristics in dynamic contrast enhanced MRI and tumor angiogenesis.

Purpose: To estimate the association between signal characteristic of dynamic enhanced MRI using curve types and angiogenesis in solitary pulmonary nodules.

Materials And Methods: Thirty-six patients with a solitary pulmonary nodule (SPN) ranging in size from 6 to 37 mm (median 17 mm) underwent dynamic contrast enhanced MRI with a time interval of 10 s over a total period of 4 min. Resulting from the time-intensity curves four different enhancement curve profiles (A-D) were defined: type A with strong increase followed by early washout, type B with strong increase without washout, type C with slow increase and type D without relevant increase.

Solitary pulmonary nodules: dynamic contrast-enhanced MR imaging--perfusion differences in malignant and benign lesions.

Purpose: To determine whether dynamic contrast material-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) imaging with use of kinetic and morphologic parameters reveals statistically significant differences between malignant and benign solitary pulmonary nodules.

Materials And Methods: Fifty-eight patients met the inclusion criteria of a solitary 5-40-mm pulmonary nodule without calcification or fat at computed tomography. Fifty-one patients were examined successfully; 46 received a histologic diagnosis, and five received a diagnosis by means of observation over 2 years.

Virtual bronchoscopy: comparison of different surface rendering models.

The aim of this study was to compare different representation models of surface-rendered virtual bronchoscopy. 10 consecutive patients with inoperable primary lung tumors underwent thin-section spiral computed tomography. The structures of interest, the tracheobronchial system and anatomical and pathological thoracic structures were segmented using an interactive threshold interval volume-growing segmentation algorithm and visualized with the aid of a color-coded surface rendering method.