Struma ovarii: role of imaging?

As clinical features in struma ovarii patients in the absence of thyrotoxicosis are generally non-specific and resemble ovarian malignancy, preoperative radiological diagnosis becomes all the more relevant in order to avoid ovarian cancer type surgery (including bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, hysterectomy, omentectomy and occasionally appendectomy) for this usually benign and rare ovarian mass. As struma ovarii is an uncommon entity, it is all the more important to perform state-of-the-art magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, including high-resolution imaging and diffusion-weighted imaging. The goal of this review paper is to give an update of the key findings of both benign and malignant struma ovarii and to present an unusual case of a purely cystic ovarian struma.

Quantification of cerebral tumour blood flow and permeability with T1-weighted dynamic contrast enhanced MRI: a feasibility study.

Objectives: Recently, T1-weighted DCE-MRI was proposed as an alternative to T2*-weighted DSC-MRI for the quantification of perfusion and permeability in brain tumors. The aim of the present feasibility study was to explore the clinical potential of the technique in different tumor types using a case-based review of initial results.

Patients And Methods: The method for data analysis was adapted from cerebral perfusion CT and applied in this study to a small group of patients with grade IV glioma and other brain tumors.

Age dependence of T1 perfusion MRI-based hemodynamic parameters in human kidneys.

Purpose: To determine the association between renal cortical perfusion parameters from T1-DCE magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and age in human kidney.

Materials And Methods: Thirty-five patients (mean age: 53 years, SD = 15 years) were imaged using inversion recovery (IR)-prepared FLASH (pulse repetition time [TR] = 4.4 msec, echo time [TE] 2.

Deconvolution-based dynamic contrast-enhanced MR imaging of breast tumors: correlation of tumor blood flow with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 status and clinicopathologic findings--preliminary results.

Purpose: To prospectively determine whether breast carcinomas possess characteristic values of tumor blood flow (TBF) that correlate with pathologic and molecular prognostic markers.

Materials And Methods: The institutional ethics committee approved this study. After informed consent was obtained, 57 women (age range, 31-80 years) with histologically proved breast cancer underwent routine magnetic resonance (MR) mammography, which included a whole-breast dynamic contrast material-enhanced (DCE) sequence.

Combined T1-based perfusion MRI and MR angiography in kidney: first experience in normals and pathology.

Objectives: To investigate the feasibility of implementing quantitative T1-perfusion in the routine MRA-protocol and to obtain a first experience in normals and pathology.

Materials And Methods: For perfusion imaging, IR-prepared FLASH (one 4 mm slice at mid-renal level, TR 4.4 ms, TE 2.

Evidence that intracoronary-injected CD133+ peripheral blood progenitor cells home to the myocardium in chronic postinfarction heart failure.

Objective: To study the biodistribution of purified CD133(+) cells after intracoronary injection in patients with stable chronic postinfarction heart failure.

Patients And Methods: Patients with longstanding myocardial infarction (>12 months prior to inclusion) and with an accessible left coronary artery were eligible. CD133(+) cells were mobilized with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor and purified with a CliniMACS device.

Deconvolution of dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI data by linear inversion: choice of the regularization parameter.

Truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD) is an effective method for the deconvolution of dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI. Two robust methods for the selection of the truncation threshold on a pixel-by-pixel basis--generalized cross validation (GCV) and the L-curve criterion (LCC)--were optimized and compared to paradigms in the literature. The methods lead to improvements in the estimate of the residue function and of its maximum and converge properly with SNR.