[Use of ultrasonography in the diagnosis of acute appendicitis].

To date, the diagnosis of acute appendicitis (AA) has been made primarily on clinical grounds and imaging techniques have been considered less useful. This paper is aimed at evaluating US utility in the diagnosis of AA. US scans of the appendix, after Puylaert, were obtained in 30 healthy subjects (group A), in 49 patients with recurrent pain in the iliac fossa (group B), and in 28 patients with clinical signs highly suggestive of AA (group C).

Optics for the x-ray imaging concentrators aboard the x-ray astronomy satellite SAX.

The scientific instrumentation onboard the Italian satellite for x-ray astronomy (SAX) foresees x-ray imaging concentrators operating in the 0.1-10-keV energy range with a spatial resolution of 1 min of arc. The optics is composed of thirty confocal-nested very thin double-cone mirrors.

[Comparative evaluation of saccoradiculography and lumbar phlebography in the diagnosis of lumbar disk herniation].

A comparative evaluation of two relevant methods (saccoradiculography and lumbar epidural venography), based on 246 case studies (133 of which surgically treated), did not reveal that one of the two could be adopted as elective test with regard to its diagnostic accuracy. However if we consider tolerance and complications of each method, lumbar epidural venography appears to be the elective test in herniated lumbar disk diagnosing.