Recent Patents on Medical Imaging (Discontinued) - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2012

Greetings from the desk of your editor. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Bentham Science for appointing me as Editor-in-Chief of this esteemed journal. I hope the readers are making use of it and are finding it helpful. Recent Patents on Medical Imaging aims to provide the most complete and reliable source of information on current developments in the field. I strongly believe that the journal is essential reading for all researchers involved in Medical Imaging. Today, medical imaging allows us to see the diseased organ, tissue and cells as well as the effect of treatments. It has been playing a more and more important role in modern medicine. Newimaging modalities and the incorporation of multimodality imaging, represent promising instruments that will-in the long run-result in significant improvements in our clinical practice. The versatility, accuracy and high resolution of these imaging modalities has already facilitated and enhanced diagnosis, surgical planning, clinical evaluations, patient management and therapeutic decisions. The salient features of the articles in this volume touch upon the use of on some well-established technologies for practical and effective medical imaging, such as Real Time Three Dimensional Transesophageal Echocardiography, Optical Coherence Tomography, Multimodal Molecular Bio-Imaging, and Diffusion Tensor Imaging. Over the new few years, many imaging applications will start to move from the realm of emerging technology to earn a well established role in clinical practice. The Editorial Board and myself will aim to provide meaningful articles about the spectrum of imaging techniques that are well written and up-to-date.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a relatively new imaging modality that has been under investigation during the past two decades for a variety of ophthalmic applications. Because the eye is directly optically accessible, OCT enables visualization of the internal architecture of the eye which is hard to reach by other high resolution imaging methods. OCT hardware and software advances have facilitated the development of numerous OCT-based biomedical technologies. Consequently, there has been a worldwide surge in U.S issued patents on OCT ophthalmic applications. The focus of this review is to summarize the U.S issued patents on OCT ophthalmic applications.

The review is on molecular imaging reporter gene expression probes to generate the image contrast. These probes utilize the imaging technology specific to microscopic physical, physiological, metabolic events and changes to differentiate pathology from normal tissue. Reporter gene expression technique generates the specific information at micro- and nanoscopic scale with details of specific molecular or metabolic event. The present paper reviews a database of measurable imaging methods of transgene expression of maltose binding domain with resource of protein molecules in bioimaging. Molecular bioimaging is based on imaging the transgene expression products and offers multimodal real-time genomic kinetics. With this aim, gene expression probes combined with adjunct molecular imaging techniques are identified and their applications are defined for: 1. noninvasive in vivo imaging methods for specific molecular expression and interactions of protein-protein domains, 2. to visualize time-based molecular events in the tissues, 3. to visualize and follow-up trafficking and targeting of cells, 4. to optimize conditions of gene therapy and monitoring drug therapeutics, 5. to develop rapid drug chemosensitivity assay to image the drug effect at cellular and molecular level by multimodal radioimaging, optical and bioluminescence imaging. The feasibility of multimodal molecular imaging techniques on one platform is reported to visualize the cells in animal body after administration of binding domain ligand into animals through oral, intraperitoneal, intravenous, and intrathecal routes. The binding domain ligand acts as a secretory signal or plasma membrane trafficking signal domain. It can be visualized by positron emission tomography imaging. Today, the main challenge in developing multimodal multifunctional double labeled molecular imaging probes is to achieve goal of rapid, reproducible multimodal imaging (optical, physical, biosensor) or radiolabel mapping (PET, CT) in noninvasive and quantitative manner that can give information in time-dependent experimental, developmental, environmental and therapeutic influence on gene products and proteins in animals or patients. This patent review will be useful resource database of molecules as ‘bioinformatics of potential reporters’ and multimodal imaging methods on same platform resource in selecting molecules to develop imaging techniques of cells or molecular events during influence of drugs, metabolism, physiology, experimental, environmental and genetics in the body.

Echocardiography plays a central role in modern practice of cardiology. The diagnostic capabilities of this technique have evolved tremendously over the last three decades. From an anatomic and quantitative standpoint, the recent introduction of real time three dimensional (3D) imaging in association with transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) has greatly facilitated identification of cardiac pathology, decision making regarding the best therapeutic approach, and communication of the findings with interventionists and cardiothoracic surgeons. It has also offered a means of properly monitoring percutaneous interventions and results of surgical repair. This review provides a summary of a recent patent, current clinical application, and future potentials of real time 3D TEE in the general practice of adult cardiovascular disease.

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) constitute a major public health problem. The armamentarium of current neuroimaging includes many techniques, and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is one of the most prominent ones. Presently, it is used for studying mild, moderate and severe TBI in humans (children, adolescents and adults), as well as in animals. The main focus of DTI is the white matter tracts. Herein, the authors briefly present the philosophy, the applications and the findings of the current global research in this field and shed light on the potential future utilization of this technology. Furthermore, recent patents in manipulating acquired TBI images are reviewed with special emphasis being placed on the innovation of new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus.

In the last decades, digital radiography (DR) is becoming more popular in relation to traditional film screen radiography. This derives mostly from the fact that digital image is prone to post- processing analysis and it can also be stored for future use. Various organizations, such as the King’s Centre for the Assessment of Radiological Equipment in the United Kingdom (KCARE), the America’s Association of physicists in medicine (AAPM) and the Australian College of Physical Engineers in Medicine (ACPSEM), have published protocols in which guidelines concerning quality assurance and acceptance tests for digital systems are referred. These guidelines are presented here and other studies conducted from individual teams also referred, which either count on the mentioned protocols or have chosen to follow an alternative method. In addition, several patents relative to the description of the two different kind of DR, Computed Radiography (CR) and Digital Direct Radiography (DDR) systems, the phantoms and the image quality are also appeared. Apart from the quality control (QC) aspects that are also met in conventional radiography (entrance surface dose-ESD, tube performance controls and image presentation on the display units), diverse methods for quality assurance of digital radiography are presented as well. These different methods concern the image quality, the automatic exposure control (AEC) system and the detector’s performance. Moreover, representative phantoms utilized in clinical practice for QC of digital systems are also displayed and conditions are tested with diverse techniques.

The elastic tissue is one of the structural components of arteries, contributing to the arterial elasticity and tensile strength, and acts as a barrier to the diffusion of large molecules. It participates in many disease processes including aneurysms, atherosclerosis, arteriovenous malformation, fibromuscular dysplasia and moyamoya disease. Moreover, it is involved in the process of arterial dilatation and plays a crucial role in the development of aneurysms. This paper sought to review the changes of the elastic tissue in arterial-dilatation-related diseases and a possible role the elastic tissue plays in these diseases. In the end, recent patents in treating these arterial dilatation-related diseases using endovascular approaches were reviewed.

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