Nonpainful remote electrical stimulation alleviates episodic migraine pain.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of remote nonpainful electrical upper arm skin stimulation in reducing migraine attack pain.

Methods: This is a prospective, double-blinded, randomized, crossover, sham-controlled trial. Migraineurs applied skin electrodes to the upper arm soon after attack onset for 20 minutes, at various pulse widths, and refrained from medications for 2 hours.

Assessment of cardiac single-photon emission computed tomography performance using a scanning linear observer.

Purpose: Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is widely used to detect myocardial ischemia and myocardial infarction. It is important to assess and compare different SPECT system designs in order to achieve the highest detectability of cardiac defects.

Methods: Whitaker et al.

A fast cardiac gamma camera with dynamic SPECT capabilities: design, system validation and future potential.

Purpose: The goal of this study is to present the Discovery NM 530c (DNM), a cardiac SPECT camera, interfacing multi-pinhole collimators with solid-state modules, aiming at slashing acquisition time without jeopardizing quality. DNM resembles PET since it enables 3-D SPECT without detector motion. We further envision how these novel capabilities may help with current and future challenges of cardiac imaging.

Singular Value Decomposition of Pinhole SPECT Systems.

A single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging system can be modeled by a linear operator H that maps from object space to detector pixels in image space. The singular vectors and singular-value spectra of H provide useful tools for assessing system performance. The number of voxels used to discretize object space and the number of collection angles and pixels used to measure image space make the matrix dimensions H large.

Determinants of the response of left ventricular ejection fraction to vasodilator stress in electrocardiographically gated (82)rubidium myocardial perfusion PET.

Purpose: Myocardial perfusion imaging with (82)Rb PET allows for ECG-gated studies to be obtained early after radiotracer injection, capturing ventricular function close to peak pharmacologic action of dipyridamole. This is different from gated SPECT and may potentially provide additional diagnostic information. We sought to identify potential correlates of the PET-derived ejection fraction response to vasodilator stress.

Characterization of uptake of the new PET imaging compound 18F-fluorobenzyl triphenyl phosphonium in dog myocardium.

Unlabelled: 18F-Labeled p-fluorobenzyl triphenyl phosphonium cation (18F-FBnTP) is a member of a new class of positron-emitting lipophilic cations that may act as myocardial perfusion PET tracers. Here, we characterize the 18F-FBnTP uptake and retention kinetics, in vitro and in vivo, as well as the myocardial and whole-body biodistribution in healthy dogs, using PET.

Methods: Time-dependent accumulation and retention of 18F-FBnTP in myocytes in vitro was studied.