Objective: Plaque characterization is essential for stroke prevention. In the study reported herein, we describe a heterogeneous phantom manufacturing technique with varying plaque compositions of different stiffness using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to emulate stenotic arteries and evaluated the use of pulse wave imaging (PWI) to assess plaque stiffness by comparing derived pulse wave velocities, with the goal of assessing plaque vulnerability and identifying high-risk patients for stroke.
Methods: Five stenotic phantoms (50% stenosis) were fabricated by pouring PVA solutions into 3-D-printed molds.
Vulnerable plaques associated with softer components may rupture, releasing thrombotic emboli to smaller vessels in the brain, thus causing an ischemic stroke. Pulse Wave Imaging (PWI) is an ultrasound-based method that allows for pulse wave visualization while the regional pulse wave velocity (PWV) is mapped along the arterial wall to infer the underlying wall compliance. One potential application of PWI is the non-invasive estimation of plaque's mechanical properties for investigating its vulnerability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Phys Chem C Nanomater Interfaces
October 2022
We probe the adsorption of molecular HO on a TiO (110)-(1 × 1) surface decorated with isolated VO clusters using ultrahigh-vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy (UHV-STM) and temperature-programmed desorption (TPD). Our STM images show that preadsorbed VO clusters on the TiO (110)-(1 × 1) surface induce the adsorption of HO molecules at room temperature (RT). The adsorbed HO molecules form strings of beads of HO dimers bound to the 5-fold coordinated Ti atom (5c-Ti) rows and are anchored by VO.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIEEE Trans Biomed Eng
January 2023
Atherosclerosis is a vascular disease characterized by compositional and mechanical changes in the arterial walls that lead to a plaque buildup. Depending on its geometry and composition, a plaque can ruptured and cause stroke, ischemia or infarction. Pulse wave imaging (PWI) is an ultrasound-based technique developed to locally quantify the stiffness of arteries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA change in elastin and collagen content is indicative of damage caused by hypertension, which changes the non-linear behavior of the vessel wall. This study was aimed at investigating the feasibility of monitoring the non-linear material behavior in an angiotensin II hypertensive mice model. Aortas from 13 hypertensive mice were imaged with pulse wave imaging (PWI) over 4 wk using a 40-MHz linear array.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control
July 2021
Pulse wave imaging (PWI) is an ultrasound imaging modality that estimates the wall stiffness of an imaged arterial segment by tracking the pulse wave propagation. The aim of the present study is to integrate PWI with vector flow imaging, enabling simultaneous and co-localized mapping of vessel wall mechanical properties and 2-D flow patterns. Two vector flow imaging techniques were implemented using the PWI acquisition sequence: 1) multiangle vector Doppler and 2) a cross-correlation-based vector flow imaging (CC VFI) method.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUltrasound Med Biol
February 2019
Carotid stenosis involves narrowing of the lumen in the carotid artery potentially leading to a stroke, which is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Several recent investigations have found that plaque structure and composition may represent a more direct biomarker of plaque rupture risk compared with the degree of stenosis. In this study, pulse wave imaging was applied in 111 (n = 11, N = 13 plaques) patients diagnosed with moderate (>50%) to severe (>80%) carotid artery stenosis to investigate the feasibility of characterizing plaque properties based on the pulse wave-induced arterial wall dynamics captured by pulse wave imaging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Current electrocardiographic and echocardiographic measurements in heart failure (HF) do not take into account the complex interplay between electrical activation and local wall motion. The utilization of novel technologies to better characterize cardiac electromechanical behavior may lead to improved response rates with cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). Electromechanical wave imaging (EWI) is a noninvasive ultrasound-based technique that uses the transient deformations of the myocardium to track the intrinsic EW that precedes myocardial contraction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe describe here a new ion mobility capable mass spectrometer which comprises a drift cell for mobility separation and a quadrapole time of flight mass spectrometer for mass analysis--the MoQTOF. A commercial QToF instrument (Micromass UK Ltd., Manchester, UK) has been modified by the inclusion of an additional chamber containing a drift cell and ancillary ion optics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have deposited Au atoms on the surface of titania without sintering or surface damage. Mass-selected Au+ atoms were deposited from the gas phase at room temperature with kinetic energies from <3 to 190+/-3.5 eV.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present the first scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) study of the deposition of mass-selected silver clusters (Ag(n),n=1, 2, 3) on a rutile TiO(2)(110)-1x1 surface at room temperature under hard-landing conditions. Under hard-landing conditions, only small features are observed on the surface in all cases without sintering or surface damage. This suggests that the high impact energy of the clusters mainly dissipates as thermal energy in the substrate, resulting in the recovery of any initial impact-induced surface damage and the formation of bound clusters on the surface near the impact point.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExperiments in which mass-selected gold clusters were deposited on a surface have found that the catalytic properties depend strongly on cluster size. However, these experiments have not established definitively that the clusters maintain their size after deposition. We report here work in which we deposit low kinetic energy, mass-selected Aun+ (n = 1-8) clusters on a rutile TiO2(1 x 1) surface and use ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy (UHV-STM) to determine their size and shape.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA new method that utilizes ligation to probe geometries of clusters in the gas-phase has been developed. This technique bases structural assignments on thermodynamic quantities obtained for sequential ligand additions to a bare cluster. The information is obtained from temperature-dependent equilibrium data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMass-selected Ag(n) (+) (n=1,2,3) clusters with impact energy less than 2 eV per atom were deposited from the gas phase onto rutile titania (110)-(1x1) single crystal surfaces at room temperature and imaged using ultra-high vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy. Upon reaching the surface, Ag monomers sintered to form three-dimensional islands of approximately 50 atoms in size, with an average measured height of 7.5 A and diameter of 42 A.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this article, we describe, for the first time, direct comparisons of the detailed structures of two small molecule organic semiconductors, oligo(phenylenvinylene) (OPV) molecules with chains of five and six phenyl rings (5R-OC(8)H(17) and 6R-OC(8)H(17)), respectively, and their luminescence properties on a single molecule level. Our data originate from a combination of two powerful diagnostic tools in physical chemistry: ion mobility and single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy. These techniques enable us to precisely determine the shapes of isolated molecules in the gas phase and to correlate these structures to the emission from single molecules supported on bare glass substrates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe sequential association energies for one through six water molecules clustering to Na(2)I(+), as well as one and two water molecules clustering to Na(3)I(2)(+), are measured. The association energies show a pairwise behavior, indicating a symmetric association of water molecules to the linear Na(2)I(+) and Na(3)I(2)(+) ions. This pairwise behavior is well reproduced by Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations.
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