Assessment of pulmonary air trapping and obstruction in expiration: an experimental MRI study.

Purpose: The aim of this experimental study was to evaluate the potential of a simple expiration technique by means of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in an animal model to detect pulmonary air-trapping areas after artificial bronchial obstruction.

Material And Methods: Sixteen pigs were evaluated by means of a modified T1-weighted FLASH with fat saturation in respiratory arrest (TR=4.6 ms, TE=1.

Propagation and functional characterization of serum-free cultured porcine hepatocytes for downstream applications.

Hepatocyte transplantation is considered an alternative to whole organ transplantation. However, the availability of human cadaveric livers for the isolation of transplantation-quality hepatocytes is increasingly restricted. Xenogeneic porcine hepatocytes may therefore serve as an alternate cell ressource.

Serum-free cryopreservation of porcine hepatocytes.

The use of porcine hepatocytes in xenotransplantation, bioartificial liver support or pharmacological approaches demands serum-free cryopreservation protocols yielding high quality, viable, functional hepatocytes. Here, primary porcine hepatocytes were frozen without serum in liquid nitrogen by the use of a computer-assisted freezing device. After thawing, more than 90% of the initial hepatocytes were lost, in part because of damage to genomic DNA.

Pulmonary resorption of inhaled gadobutrol in an animal model: usage to determine lung diffusion in MRI examinations.

The aim of this study was to examine a pulmonary gadobutrol resorption after inhalation. An examination of 16 young swine, which were given different amounts of gadobutrol through inhalation, was performed. A measurement of the signal elevation in peripheral lung tissue as well as in the thoracic aorta was made using a T(1)-weighted FLASH-3D sequence in a 1.