Cranial nerve threshold for thermal injury induced by MRI-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (MRgHIFU): preliminary results on an optic nerve model.

Future clinical applications of magnetic resonance imaging-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (MRgHIFU) are moving toward the management of different intracranial pathologies. We sought to validate the production, safety, and efficacy of thermal injury to cranial nerves generated by MRgHIFU. In this study, five female domestic pigs underwent a standard bifrontal craniectomy under general anesthesia.

6-Mercaptopurine attenuates adhesive molecules in experimental vasospasm.

Objective: Adhesion molecules, including intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1), and E-selectin, are important inflammatory mediators which are elevated in the serum of patients following aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). The authors previously found that 6-mercaptopurine (6-mp) was effective in preventing and reversing arterial narrowing in a rodent SAH model. The present study was to examine whether levels of adhesion molecules were altered after treatment with 6-mp in this animal model.

Quantification of cerebral perfusion with "Real-Time" contrast-enhanced ultrasound.

Background: No noninvasive technique is currently capable of "real-time" assessment and monitoring of cerebral blood flow (CBF). We hypothesized that cerebral perfusion could be accurately measured and monitored in "real time" with contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEU).

Methods And Results: Cerebral perfusion was assessed in 9 dogs through a craniotomy with CEU at baseline and during hypercapnia and hypocapnia while normoxia was maintained.

MR imaging and spectroscopy using hyperpolarized 129Xe gas: preliminary human results.

Using a new method of xenon laser-polarization that permits the generation of liter quantities of hyperpolarized 129Xe gas, the first 129Xe imaging results from the human chest and the first 129Xe spectroscopy results from the human chest and head have been obtained. With polarization levels of approximately 2%, cross-sectional images of the lung gas-spaces with a voxel volume of 0.9 cm3 (signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), 28) were acquired and three dissolved-phase resonances in spectra from the chest were detected.