Involvement of BRCA1 and BRCA2 in breast cancer in a western Finnish sub-population.

To date, two major familial breast cancer predisposition genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, have been identified with hundreds of germ-line mutations, accounting for 5--10% of all breast cancer and 40--60% of all inherited breast cancer. Unexpectedly elevated incidence of breast cancer, especially in the older age classes, was observed in a Western Finnish region representing a relatively homogeneous population. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that there are inherited BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, which confer variable and/or age-dependent penetrance on carriers.

User requirements for information systems in nuclear medicine.

In the field of COST cooperation (COST = European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research) a project B2 for Quality Assurance in Nuclear Medicine Software has been established. In a memorandum of understanding setting up this project, user requirements were to be defined for the hardware and software used for data acquisition, processing and presentation. A subgroup of the management committee of COST B2 were interested in the Advanced Informatics in Medicine, AIM, task T-734 'Quality Assurance of Medical Software', and the AIM Project 'A 1034', coordinated by Dr K.

Coordinate-based mapping--a new method in health services research.

The Finnish national hospital discharge registers from 1985 and 1988 have been analysed by the National Board of Health. Results are provided for all the 21 Finnish hospital districts and central communal organizations. The small area variation phenomenon in hospital utilization cannot be explained by demographic or epidemiological factors.

The design of the detector and collimators for a hybrid scanner.

The hybrid scanner is a scanning device in which a long crystal with two or more photomultiplier (PM) tubes acts as a gamma camera along the crystal axis; the device acts as a linear scanner in a direction perpendicular to the crystal axis. A detailed analysis of the intrinsic resolution and uniformity is given for a two-PM-tube hybrid scanner (with one PM tube at each end) and the expressions derived should help the designer to choose the best crystal system. Collimation theory is discussed for the general hybrid scanner.