Current Medical Imaging - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2014

A variety of factors cause infertility, which may arise from treatment of salpingemphraxis, hypophysoma or systemic disease. Many factors affect female reproductive function, including age, endocrine level, disease, ovarian reserve, environment, endometrial receptivity and so on. The two key factors that affect the female reproductive function are ovarian reserve and endometrial receptivity. In vitro fertilization-embryo transfer has brought benefits to women suffering from infertility. Ultrasound is a significant method to monitor ovarian reserve and endometrial receptivity in vitro fertilization- embryo transfer treatment. We will review the application and development of ultrasound in ⌈ovarian reserve and endometrial receptivity in this paper.

Introduction: MRCP has achieved widespread success as a diagnostic tool for biliopancreatic cancer. Aim of the study: is to assess the diagnostic quality and overall accuracy of MRCP techniques for the evaluation of biliopancreatic cancer. Patients and Methods: from 266 patients (115 male, 151 female; mean age 50), 63 suspected for biliary tree or pancreatic diseases cancer and histopathologically confirmed, were enrolled in this study. MRCP protocols applied for imaging of biliary and pancreatic tree were; T2-weighted Fast spin echo (FSE) sequence on the axial plane, three-dimensional, fatsuppressed, heavily T2-weighted FSE sequence with multislab acquisition mode, two-dimensional thick single slab projectional images, three-dimensional reconstruction algorithms. Results: among the patients, jaundice and abdominal pain were the commonest clinical complaints. Three-dimensional, fat-suppressed, heavily T2-weighted FSE sequence with multislab acquisition mode shows a significant (p<0.05) improvement in accuracy to from 88.1% to 92.9% compared to two-dimensional thick single slab projectional images. Moreover, there is a significant increase in sensitivity from 90.5% to 95.2% was seen; specificity, too, increased from 85.7% to 90.5%. Furthermore, Overall bile duct visualization with the 3D fat-suppressed, heavily T2 FSE with multislab acquisition technique was rated significantly higher (mean score = 4.7) versus 2D thick single slab projectional images (mean score= 4) (P < 0.05). Conclusion: MRCP plays a critical role in the differential diagnosis with significant improvement in the accuracy of the diagnosis of biliopancreatic cancer.

Stem cell therapies have great promise for treatment of many debilitating diseases and damaged tissues. Clinical trials evaluating the safety of cell-based therapies are currently under way. Today's biomedical imaging technology allows for real-time, noninvasive monitoring of grafted stem cells including their distribution, migration, survival and differentiation. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of nanoparticle-labeled cells being one of the most commonly used techniques. In order to track cells by MRI, the cells need to be labeled with exogenous magnetic nanoparticles, resulting in some unavoidable deficiencies restrict its wide clinical application. Metabolic profile takes an important role in understanding and diagnosing the diseases, identify the cell and tissues types, valuating the treatment effect and prognosis. MR spectroscopy (MRS) as an excellent tool is being most widely used to obtain the metabolic profile and biomarkers of cells in non-invasively, therefore, it might become a new and powerful technology to monitor the transplanted stem cells. Recent three years, some researches about the metabolic profiling and unique biomarker of the stem cells, such as neural stem cell (NSC), mesenchymal stem cell (MSC), glioma-initiating cells(GIC) and embryonic stem cell (ECS) have been reported, and demonstrated great application prospect. In this overview article, the objecitve is to review the current advances with regard metabolic profiles of stem cells, methods for biomarkers extraction and acquisition, challenges and developmental direction of stem cell MR spectroscopy (MRS) studies.

Genetic algorithm (GA) based feature selection method is an evolving search heuristic, used to provide solutions to optimization problems. Feature selection is an important aspect that improves classification accuracy. The main objective of this work is to utilize GA for feature selection by integrating it with a bank of multi-class Support Vector Machine (SVM) for identification of the effective feature set. The proposed GA based approach finds its application in epileptic seizure detection. EEG dataset containing artefacts and noise were removed by employing constrained Independent Component Analysis (cICA) and Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT). The features of the input data are constructed in the form of feature vector by FastICA technique. The fitness calculation for the selection of individuals in the GA is calculated by a Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) classifier. The multi-class Support Vector Machine (SVM) (one-against-all) classifier is used for the validation of the selected features. The samples are taken from 948 patients and the classes are divided as normal, seizure, and seizure-free using artificial neural networks. Experimental results shows that the GA - multi-SVM feature selection technique can achieve higher accuracies as compared to the case without feature selection.

Radiotherapy research requires a flexible computational research environment for Monte Carlo and patientspecific treatment planning. The ability to perform organs' delineation and measurements of dose distribution within the patient is necessary for analysis of treatment parameters. XSTING was used for the evaluation of chest-wall irradiation using electron beams. Treatment planning was performed by EGSnrcMP (BEAMnrc and DOSXYZnrc); the dose files were transported to XSTING to calculate isodose distribution and dose volume histograms (DVH). The results were compared with those produced by DOSXYZnrc output as well as the 3D representation of volumes receiving a certain dose range, to make sure that XSTING accurately computes DVHs. The results showed a good match in isodose distributions and DVHs for volume of the lung that received specified dose-levels thus proving the accuracy of XSTING. The short time needed to perform dose distribution measurements proved that XSTING can be used in patient-specific treatment planning. XSTING can thus be used effectively in Monte Carlo research.

Objectives: The aim of our study was to evaluate the incremental value of of 18F-flouro-2-deoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) performed with non-contrast enhanced computed tomography (non-ceCT) to the contrast enhanced CT (ceCT), and the advantage of combined evaluation over either modality alone in the detection of recurrent pancreatic carcinoma and cholangiocarcinoma. Methods: A retrospective analysis was done on 47 patients with a history of pancreatic carcinoma (n=24) or cholangiocarcinoma (n=23), all of whom were referred for restaging with a FDG-PET/non-ceCT and a ceCT study during the follow- up period after first-line therapy. Histological and radiological follow-up were used to determine the accuracy of the imaging findings. Results: A lesion-based analysis showed, when equivocal lesions were considered negative, that the sensitivity and specificity of PET/ceCT were 89.1% and 76.9% , respectively, whereas those of PET/non-ceCT were 71.4% and 80.8% , respectively, and those of ceCT were 63.9% and 84.6% , respectively. PET/ceCT had significantly higher sensitivity compared to PET/non-ceCT (p =0.0003) and ceCT alone (p=0.0003). When equivocal lesions were considered positive, the sensitivity and specificity of PET/ceCT were 93.3% and 69.2% , respectively, whereas those of PET/non-ceCT were 77.3% and 80.8% , respectively, and those of ceCT were 76.5% and 55.1% , respectively. Within the PET/ceCT group, negative reading increased specificity from 69.2% to 76.9% (p= 0.04), at no significant cost to sensitivity (decrease from 93.3% to 89.1% , p= 0.07). Conclusions: PET/non-enhanced CT when interpreted together with ceCT, significantly improves sensitivity of restaging of pancreatic and cholangiocarcinomas at a minor expense to specificity. Our results provide evidence that ceCT and PET/CT are complementary tests that enhance the diagnostic accuracy of restaging in patients with pancreatic and cholangiocarcinomas.

With the rapid development in serious games, health games have been demonstrated as a useful tool to enhance treatment effects with respect to some problematic behaviors. Every health game has its own game design which can affect the health in a positive manner. In this paper we fixed Imagery Psychotherapy into game design and then developed the 3D Graphical Imagery Psychotherapy video game with cognitive behavioral effects on the children suffering from brain tumor. This therapeutic game attempts to provide a new way to target the psychological illness related to this disease. Experimental user tests were conducted in three hospitals of Pakistan analyzing the different problematic behaviors of a cancer patient before and after the therapy application. The outcome of the study proved that 3D Graphical Imagery Therapy game has been effective in recovering from psychological illness related to brain tumor. The results showed a significant improvement regarding the behaviors, hence this game design found to be effective.

Phytobezoars in the small bowel are rare and most frequently demonstrate obstructive effects leading to small bowel obstruction. Several case reports on the radiological findings of primary small bowel phytobezoars are available in the literature. However, very little is published on the CT findings. We present the CT results in a patient with phytobezoars in the stomach and small bowel with secondary small bowel obstruction, and highlight the diagnostic value of CT imaging.