A hyperspectral fluorescence system for 3D in vivo optical imaging.

In vivo optical instruments designed for small animal imaging generally measure the integrated light intensity across a broad band of wavelengths, or make measurements at a small number of selected wavelengths, and primarily use any spectral information to characterize and remove autofluorescence. We have developed a flexible hyperspectral imaging instrument to explore the use of spectral information to determine the 3D source location for in vivo fluorescence imaging applications. We hypothesize that the spectral distribution of the emitted fluorescence signal can be used to provide additional information to 3D reconstruction algorithms being developed for optical tomography.

Alcoholism, peripheral neuropathy (PNP) and cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy (CAN).

In contrast to diabetic autonomic neuropathy, cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy (CAN) in long-term alcoholics has been studied rarely. Using both standardized bedside tests and computer-assisted analysis of heart rate variability (HRV), we prospectively compared autonomic neurocardial function between 35 strictly selected, detoxified alcoholics (DSM-III-R), and 80 well matched healthy controls. Evidence for a potential CAN was found in 25.

[Medical deontology in Islam].

Our knowledge of medical practice in medieval Islam is still scanty. It is mostly derived from normative sources, textbooks and deontological texts, which rather depict an ambitious ideal to be followed than the social reality of the average physician. Moreover, deontological regulations in Arabic medical literature are to a large degree shaped by traditional conceptions.

[The formation of the child in the womb reproduction and fetal development in medieval Arabic-Islamic medicine].

In the following survey of theories of reproduction and pre-natal development in medieval Arabic medicine, the first part outlines the historical and methodological premises, indicates the major Greek sources (Corpus Hippocraticum, Aristotle, Galen) and introduces the Arabic texts relevant to the subject. In the second part three examples taken from Ibn Sīnās' Canon medicinae are presented to substantiate the supposition that the particular contribution of medieval Islam in the field of reproduction (which continued into the Latin Middle Ages) lay in the merging and harmonisation of data of various origins and concepts developed in different explanatory contexts within the Greek tradition.