Resting-State Functional Connectivity Profile of Insular Subregions.

The insula is often considered the fifth lobe of the brain and is increasingly recognized as one of the most connected regions in the brain, with widespread connections to cortical and subcortical structures. As a follow-up to our previous tractography work, we investigated the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) profiles of insular subregions and assessed their concordance with structural connectivity. We used the CONN toolbox to analyze the rsFC of the same 19 insular regions of interest (ROIs) we used in our prior tractography work and regrouped them into six subregions based on their connectivity pattern similarity.

Design of a Low-Cost, Self-Adaptive and MRI-Compatible Cardiac Gating System.

Objective: Cardiac gating, synchronizing medical scans with cardiac activity, is widely used to make quantitative measurements of physiological events and to obtain high-quality scans free of pulsatile artefacts. This can provide important information for disease diagnosis, targeted control of medical microrobots, etc. The current work proposes a low-cost, self-adaptive, MRI-compatible cardiac gating system.

Design of a Patient-Specific Respiratory-Motion-Simulating Platform for In Vitro 4D Flow MRI.

Four-dimensional (4D) flow magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a leading-edge imaging technique and has numerous medicinal applications. In vitro 4D flow MRI can offer some advantages over in vivo ones, especially in accurately controlling flow rate (gold standard), removing patient and user-specific variations, and minimizing animal testing. Here, a complete testing method and a respiratory-motion-simulating platform are proposed for in vitro validation of 4D flow MRI.

Quantification and 3D Localization of Magnetically Navigated Superparamagnetic Particles Using MRI in Phantom and Swine Chemoembolization Models.

Objective: Superparamagnetic nanoparticles (SPIONs) can be combined with tumor chemoembolization agents to form magnetic drug-eluting beads (MDEBs), which are navigated magnetically in the MRI scanner through the vascular system. We aim to develop a method to accurately quantify and localize these particles and to validate the method in phantoms and swine models.

Methods: MDEBs were made of FeO SPIONs.

Paclitaxel and mortality in patients with claudication and de novo femoropopliteal lesions: a historical cohort study.

Objective: To compare the mortality rates of patients with claudication and de novo femoropopliteal lesions treated with and without paclitaxel coated devices (PCD).

Background: A recent meta-analysis, mostly including patients with claudication and de novo femoropopliteal lesions but also with recurrent stenoses and critical limb ischemia, has shown a significant excess mortality in patients treated with PCD.

Methods: Comparison of two historical cohorts of patients presenting with claudication and de novo femoropopliteal lesions treated with and without PCD between 2008 and 2018.

The Value of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow SPECT and FDG PET in Operculoinsular Epilepsy.

Purpose: Operculoinsular epilepsy (OIE) can be challenging to diagnose. While the value of SPECT cerebral blood flow and PET F-FDG studies for presurgical evaluation of patients with medial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) is well established, it remains unclear whether they can help identify an operculoinsular epileptic focus. This study assesses the value of interictal/ictal regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) SPECT and FDG PET for OIE diagnosis.