Thoracic Ultrasound: Technique, Applications, and Interpretation.

Thoracic ultrasound is used at the bedside in emergency and critical care settings. Advantages of ultrasound include rapid real-time, low-cost, diagnostic information that can direct patient care without the use of ionizing radiation. We describe methods on how to perform lung ultrasound, with the intent to educate the radiologist who might otherwise be relatively unfamiliar with thoracic sonography.

Biomechanical factors in coronary vulnerable plaque risk of rupture: intravascular ultrasound-based patient-specific fluid-structure interaction studies.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to elucidate the mechanisms and underlying biomechanical factors that may play a role in the risk of rupture of vulnerable plaques (VPs) by studying patient-based geometries of coronary arteries reconstructed from intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) imaging utilizing fluid-structure interaction (FSI) numerical simulations.

Background: According to recent estimates, coronary artery disease is responsible for one in six deaths in the USA, and causes about one million heart attacks each year. Among these, the rupture of coronary VPs followed by luminal blockage is widely recognized as a major cause of sudden heart attacks; most importantly, the patients may appear as asymptomatic under routine screening before the occurrence of the index event.

Patient-based abdominal aortic aneurysm rupture risk prediction with fluid structure interaction modeling.

Elective repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is warranted when the risk of rupture exceeds that of surgery, and is mostly based on the AAA size as a crude rupture predictor. A methodology based on biomechanical considerations for a reliable patient-specific prediction of AAA risk of rupture is presented. Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations conducted in models reconstructed from CT scans of patients who had contained ruptured AAA (rAAA) predicted the rupture location based on mapping of the stresses developing within the aneurysmal wall, additionally showing that a smaller rAAA presented a higher rupture risk.