Diagnostic Imaging - Science topic

check this link:

Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) has been deemed the gold standard imaging procedure for diagnosing chronic pancreatitis

As you are aware MRI scans focus on Anatomical structure.  This is very useful for obvious physical damage.  For more subtle damage such as ligamentous tears particularly in the cervical spine with emphasis on C1-3 an upright MRI can be very useful in diagnosing tears as the pressure of the head can be sufficient to push the cervical spine out of alignment revealing tears in the complex set of ligaments in this area of the neck.  Such damage is often overlooked in a supine MRI as in an non-weight-bearing situation the cervical spine can realign, the tears are not easily visible, and the MRI can be inadvertently misread as normal.

To really demonstrate subtle brain dysfunction properly read SPECT scanning is much more likely to demonstrate disruption of blood flow which correlates with cognitive dysfunction.

PET scanning which also measures blood flow could be good but it is a lot more expensive.

fMR I scanning has recently been called into serious question as a reliable tool to measure blood flow

Review questions reliability of fMRI data <http://r.smartbrief.com/ resp/ hLjvDeviqgoKreoYfDlkcYfCcnBt? format=standard>

Glitches in the most widely used software systems for evaluating functional MRI data may be linked to a 70% false-positive rate from 1992 to 2015 and may bring into question the validity of up to 40,000 studies, according to a review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<http://r.smartbrief. com/resp/ hLjvDeviqgoKreoMfDlkcYfCXtSS>. The findings, based on a mass empirical analysis involving 499 healthy, resting-state control cases, also showed that 40% of a sample of 241 studies didn't report correcting for multiple comparisons, suggesting that "many group results in the fMRI literature suffer even worse false-positive rates than found here," researchers said.

Hope this helps John Thornton

Does this help?

Radiation doses sustained by lizards in a continuously irradiated natural enclosure. FB Turner, JR Lannom - Ecology, 1968

Effects of whole-body gamma irradiation on various life stages of the toad, Bufo woodhousei fowleri. HF Landreth, PB Dunaway, GE Cosgrove. Radiation research, 1974

 RATL: A database of reptile and amphibian toxicology literature

BD Pauli, SL Money, JA Perrault - 2000 - publications.gc.ca

Acute gamma irradiation experiments with the lizard Uta stansburiana

FB Turner, JR Lannom, HJ Kania   Radiation research, 1967

Effects of Continuous Irradiation 

FB TURNER - Advances in Radiation Biology, 2013 - books.google.com

you are wellcome but how do you practice nuclear médicine in the Sudan? Teleradiology is not the good answer as you need facilities not only  in terms of Equipment  (detectors, radiopharmaceuticals,...) but also with regard to the medical and paramedical staff. This is a high tech spacialty with very special needs. Best regards

I believe there would be value in explaining the probability and meaning to patients. We starting doing this for the treatment of respiratory tract infections for college students and are seeing good results. If you have not already, I would suggest the Ottawa Research Institute website on Shared Decision Making. https://decisionaid.ohri.ca/index.html  They have examples of decision aids that are already available and international guidelines for development of new aids. Some of the decision aids are copyrighted; however, I have found the authors to be very open to sharing their tools and knowledge. Good luck!

Dear colleagues,

Let discuss Hunter syndrome and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (an 18q21.3 deletion).  Let look at this case by "glial eyes". MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) as a modern variation of PET (positron emission resonance) helps to measure oxygen circulation. These white areas in pictures are certainly without the circulation (means blood vessel position and function and hemoglobin circulation are damaged). Therefore and certainly, astrocytes are involved. It is areas where nerves and neurons not function (damaged, died or not developed), but glial cells usually survive. Why? Because the neurons cannot stand without oxygen, glucose (and other nutrients)), but glia can (relying on Krebs cycle). Glial scars can further block nerve terminals, brain conducting zones, thus the neuronal communication in theses areas (white spots at MRI) is severely blocked. Following described symptoms of delayed mental and coordination development are obvious, the patient has GDD and he can't talk any meaningful word.

These areas are therefore filled with fibrous astrocytes and oligodendrocytes (as in corpus callosum) which lost their native behavior.   In either hyper-myelination (in theory) or hypo-myelination (as in MS) the symptoms would be somehow similar causing mental dysfunction.  Hunter syndrome causes mucopolysaccharides. Another example is an 18q21.3 deletion induces hyperuricemia and typical symptoms of the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome:  a lack of hypoxanthine-guanine-phosphoribosyl-transferase (HGPRT) function. Such patients develop progressive peripheral neuropathy in additon to profound mental retardation and self-injurious behavior in the childhood.

Interestingly, Dr. Danilov at Wisconsin University developed stimulating devices which help to recover in cases similar to the symptoms described. Dr. Danilov technique is based on stimulation of brain conducting zones via external devices that help even in MS cases. Please check. http://www.supportuw.org/stories/feature/healing-the-brain-through-the-tongue/

Cordially, Serguei.

Hello Fellow researchers.

I have a similar query. I want to screen approx. 10^6 colonies from a mutant library that is supposed to show cellulolytic activity. I know that congo red and CMC in agar plate will form clear zone,but the wash and stain step will decrease the viability of cells. 

So are there any other alternatives to screen for celluloytic activity in petri dish and also pick the positive clones for further characterization.

Kindly share me ideas and literatures if available.

I am afraid that post-MI VSD closure remains technically difficult.

A few propositions:

1. if your patient is stable and does not need any mechanical assist: balloon pump or ECMO: wait for a few weeks to allow the tissues tos heal or scar and avoid further tearing of the VSD.

2. If the VSD is located mid-septal or apical, choose the jugular approach.

3. If you decide to make a arteriovenous loop (which is often necessary), try to avoid strenuous traction and never leave your guide wire uncovered.

4. choose a large sheath (14 F) (kink resistant) and try to keep a guide wire in position while you advance the device or advance your sheath a little bit further in the LV

Overall, there are not many ways you can control delivery of the sheath or device during the procedure in order to avoid tearing a fresh MI-VSD

The  materials  for  shielding  and  the  lead  equivalence  should  be  put  into  consideration.

Centres  with  similar  shielding  goals  should  be  group  together  to  make  room  for  proper   comparison  and  analyses.

You  may  wish  to  Interview   the  proprietors  of  radio-diagnostic  centres  involved  to  know  the  rationale  for  their  choice  of  shields.

Thanks so much everyone! :)

I have the database for digital mammogram which is older one and the ground truth information is available

Below is the answer to another question that I gave a while ago, and you should find it helpful:

It is worth adding something to the second part of your question. As you know there are no safe radiation doses (in theory at least). So the objective of shielding is to to ensure that the doses outside the shielded area do not exceed legal limits, or other requirements that may be set nationally. This creates problems in many countries, which do not have their own regulations and tend to follow guidelines available internationally. The most important problem for Engilsh language guidance is that the reccomendations from the US are quite different to those from the EU and the UK. Also, the EC and UK (and many other countries) impose an additional limitation referred to as a Dose Constraint. This is a level used during, for example, the planning of a building to facilitate optimization. Briefly the design levels that tend to be quoted in the US literature are often as high as 50 mSv/y (occupational dose limit). The legal limit often used in EC countries is often as low as 1 mSv/y (public dose limit) and when designing a building this is often reduced further to the design dose constraint of 0.3 mSv/y. All of this is discussed in some detail in the document;

"The Design of Diagnostic Medical Facilities where Ionising Radiation is used."

available for download from my Researchgate page at:

"Normal" CT scale may range from, let's say, -1024 (-1000 being air) to +3072 (0 is water, +1000 would be bone), that is it has 4096 possible values and can be stored as a 12-bit number (although usually each pixel will use 16 bits).

"Extended" CT may range for example from -10000 to +30000 (it may be different depending on the manufacturer), but usually still -1000 would be air, and +1000 would be bone. Information on attenuation will be no more precise that in "normal" CT scale. The only advantage would be in areas with very high attenuation (metal implants), which normally would be "saturated" (maximum HU values). With extended CT scale you can see metal objects more clearly (they may have for example 8000-9000 HU), and streak artifacts may be reduced.

I believe there were some CT scanners, for which "extended" CT scale meant -10000 for air and +10000 for bone, but are they still in use? Anyway, I do not believe that would give you any more information - "normal" CT scale is precise enough. And noise in typical CT image (measured as standard deviation of HU values in uniform area in the image) is usually much higher than 1HU, so it would not allow to differentiate two structures differing by 0,5 HU.

In my experience the only neurophysiological useful test in trigeminal or other facial nevralgias is the trigeminal-facial reflex and its variants.