Brain dysfunction in fibromyalgia and somatization disorder using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy: a controlled study.

Objective: To evaluate the brain metabolite patterns in patients with fibromyalgia (FM) and somatization disorder (STD) compared with healthy controls through spectroscopy techniques and correlate these patterns with psychological variables.

Method: Design. Controlled, cross-sectional study.

Arthroscopic treatment of unstable total hip replacement.

Hip arthroscopy may be useful in the diagnosis and treatment of apparently well-implanted but unstable total hip replacement prostheses. We present 2 cases of arthroscopically assisted capsular tightening in unstable total hip replacements. Both cases had significant capsular laxity.

Correlation of findings in advanced MR techniques with global severity scales in patients with some grade of cognitive impairment.

Introduction: Some previous studies in patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease have probed changes in the results of (1)H magnetic resonance spectroscopy and perfusion- and diffusion-weighted imaging. The purpose of this work was to correlate the results of perfusion- and diffusion-weighted imaging and magnetic resonance spectroscopy with the results of two global severity scales in cognitive impairment: the clinical dementia rating (CDR) and the global deterioration scale (GDS).

Patients And Methods: We evaluated 87 patients with cognitive impairment of diverse grade (35 men and 52 women; mean age, 70.

Ophthalmoplegic migraine. Two patients with an absolute response to indomethacin.

Two patients suffering from ophthalmoplegic migraine had a strictly unilateral headache absolutely responsive to indomethacin, but not to other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, analgesics or corticosteroids. Such observations raise a therapeutic alternative and suggest that ophthalmoplegic migraine may present with different headache phenotypes.

Hematological indices, mountain sickness and MRI brain abnormalities in professional and amateur mountain climbers after altitude exposure.

The purpose of this work was to correlate the presence of brain abnormalities on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with changes in hematological variables and the presence of mountain sickness in 21 mountain climbers involved in two different expeditions to high mountains, Everest and Aconcagua, without supplementary oxygen and recommended acclimatization for this kind of activities. The climbers underwent medical examination, hematological studies, electrocardiogram and MRI of the cerebrum. Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to evaluate the changes in hematocrit, hemoglobin, red blood cells, iron and ferritin.

An open-label, prospective study of levetiracetam in children and adolescents with Tourette syndrome.

Objectives: To evaluate the usefulness of levetiracetam (LEV) for the treatment of tics in patients with Tourette syndrome (TS) by means of a prospective, open-label, 12-week study.

Material And Methods: Twenty-nine patients with TS who received LEV to control their tics were admitted to the study. The authors recorded the following variables: initial status (Yale Global Tic Severity Scale - YGTSS - and the scale of Modified Clinical Global Impression -MCGI), the clinical status at 3 months using the same scales, and clinical/medical impression of improvement.

Utility of different MR modalities in mild cognitive impairment and its use as a predictor of conversion to probable dementia.

Rationale And Objectives: Mild cognitive impairment has been regarded as a pre-Alzheimer condition, but some patients do not develop dementia. The authors' objective was to determine whether findings from a combined use of H1 magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), perfusion imaging (PI), and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) would predict conversion from amnesic mild cognitive impairment to dementia and to compare the diagnostic accuracy in discriminating patients with probable Alzheimer disease (AD), mixed dementia (MD), Lewy body dementia (LBD), pre-Alzheimer disease mild cognitive impairment (MCI), vascular MCI (VaMCI), and anxious or depression patients with cognitive impairment (DeMCI).

Materials And Methods: A longitudinal cohort of 119 consecutive and incident subjects (73 women, 46 men; age 70+/-9.

MRI denoising using non-local means.

Magnetic Resonance (MR) images are affected by random noise which limits the accuracy of any quantitative measurements from the data. In the present work, a recently proposed filter for random noise removal is analyzed and adapted to reduce this noise in MR magnitude images. This parametric filter, named Non-Local Means (NLM), is highly dependent on the setting of its parameters.

A nonparametric MRI inhomogeneity correction method.

Magnetic resonance images are commonly affected by intensity inhomogeneities which make it difficult to obtain any quantitative measures from them. We present a new method of automatically correcting this artifact using a nonparametric coarse to fine approach which allows bias fields to be modeled with different frequency ranges without user supervision. We also propose a new entropy-related cost function based on the combination of intensity and gradient image features for more robust homogeneity measurement.