The effects of ambient lighting in chest radiology reading rooms.

Under typical dark chest radiography reading room conditions, a radiologist's pupils contract and dilate as their visual focus intermittently shifts between the high luminance monitor and the darker background wall, resulting in increased visual fatigue and degradation of diagnostic performance. A controlled increase of ambient lighting may minimize these visual adjustments and potentially improve comfort and accuracy. This study was designed to determine the effect of a controlled increase of ambient lighting on chest radiologist nodule detection performance.

Nonsurgical extracardiac vascular shunts in the thorax: clinical and imaging characteristics.

Extracardiac nonsurgical vascular shunts in the thorax are a group of well-recognized heterogeneous conditions, frequently symptomatic, in which there is diversion of blood flow from one vessel to another or from a vessel to a cardiac chamber. The authors describe and classify many of these nonsurgical extracardiac shunts or fistulas according to their source and endpoint (eg, systemic-to-systemic, systemic-to-pulmonic, pulmonic-to-systemic, and pulmonic-to-pulmonic) and to whether the oxygenated blood mixes with deoxygenated systemic venous flow (left-to-right shunts), deoxygenated blood bypasses the pulmonary capillary bed (right-to-left shunts), or oxygenated blood recirculates (left-to-left shunts). Clinical manifestations and imaging appearances of these conditions are highlighted.

Mucoid impactions: finger-in-glove sign and other CT and radiographic features.

Mucoid impaction is a relatively common finding at chest radiography and computed tomography (CT). Both congenital and acquired abnormalities may cause mucoid impaction of the large airways that often manifests as tubular opacities known as the finger-in-glove sign. The congenital conditions in which this sign most often appears are segmental bronchial atresia and cystic fibrosis.

Computed tomography of partial anomalous pulmonary venous connection in adults.

Objectives: To systematically describe the imaging features and clinical correlates of a partial anomalous pulmonary venous connection diagnosed on computed tomography (CT) in adults.

Methods: Twenty-nine adults with a partial anomalous pulmonary venous connection on CT were retrospectively identified. There were 19 women and 10 men, with a mean age of 53 (range: 19-83) years.

Pneumonia: high-resolution CT findings in 114 patients.

The objective of the present study was to assess the high-resolution CT appearances of different types of pneumonia. The high-resolution CT scans obtained in 114 patients (58 immunocompetent, 59 immunocompromised) with bacterial, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, viral, fungal, and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonias were analyzed retrospectively by two independent observers for presence, pattern, and distribution of abnormalities. Areas of air-space consolidation were not detected in patients with viral pneumonia and were less frequently seen in patients with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (2 of 22 patients, 9%) than in bacterial (30 of 35, 85%), Mycoplasma pneumoniae (22 of 28, 79%), and fungal pneumonias (15 of 20, 75%; p<0.

PET imaging in patients with bronchioloalveolar cell carcinoma.

Objective: Focal bronchioloalveolar cell carcinoma (BAC) has been reported as often being negative on 2-[fluorine-18] fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG-PET) scans, but no studies have examined the FDG-PET findings of both the focal and multifocal forms of the disease. The purpose of this study was to examine the sensitivity of PET in detecting both forms of BAC.

Materials And Methods: A retrospective review of our tumor registry revealed 15 patients who had pathologically proved BAC and who had undergone FDG-PET imaging.

Computed tomography diagnosis of macroscopic pulmonary fat embolism.

Pulmonary fat embolism probably occurs commonly after major orthopedic injuries and after orthopedic surgery. Furthermore, tiny fat emboli can often be shown by transesophageal echocardiography during orthopedic surgery. However, large macroscopic are rarely identified radiologically.