High Magnification Digital Dermoscopy of Basal Cell Carcinoma: A Single-centre Study on 400 cases.

The aim of this study was to assess the frequency of classic dermoscopic basal cell carcinoma (BCC) features and the sensitivity of new descriptors, such as light brown nests (homogeneous and structured) only visible employing a high magnification digital videomicroscope. A retrospective analysis of 2,024 highly magnified digital images referring to 400 BCCs was performed by 3 independent observers, who assessed 11 classic BCC descriptors and the new ones. Light brown nests were detected in 40.5% of BCCs. Homogeneous ones were observable in 17.8%, and structured nests in 32.8%. Light brown nests were visible in 14.3% of non-pigmented lesions, whereas in the pigmented groups these were observed in 42-54% of the cases. We suggest that brown nests described in this study may improve early recognition of superficial BCCs and of non-pigmented or slightly pigmented ones that may lack classic dermoscopic patterns

Clinical applications of in vivo and ex vivo confocal microscopy

Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) has been introduced in clinical settings as a tool enabling a quasi-histologic view of a given tissue, without performing a biopsy. It has been applied to many fields of medicine mainly to the skin and to the analysis of skin cancers for both in vivo and ex vivo CLSM. In vivo CLSM involves reflectance mode, which is based on refractive index of cell structures serving as endogenous chromophores, reaching a depth of exploration of 200 \ub5m. It has been proven to increase the diagnostic accuracy of skin cancers, both melanoma and nonmelanoma. While histopathologic examination is the gold standard for diagnosis, in vivo CLSM alone and in addition to dermoscopy, contributes to the reduction of the number of excised lesions to exclude a melanoma, and to improve margin recognition in lentigo maligna, enabling tissue sparing for excisions. Ex vivo CLSM can be performed in reflectance and fluorescent mode. Fluorescence confocal microscopy is applied for \u201creal-time\u201d pathological examination of freshly excised specimens for diagnostic purposes and for the evaluation of margin clearance after excision in Mohs surgery. Further prospective interventional studies using CLSM might contribute to increase the knowledge about its application, reproducing real-life settings

Measurement of Actinides in Biological System; Radioanalytical determination of americium in human urines by extraction chromatography and high resolution alpha-spectrometry

Within the radiation protection physical surveillance program of some workers, involved in the decommissioning operations of a nuclear reprocessing plant of the Italian National Agency for New Technologies Energy and Environment, CR Saluggia (ENEA) in the North of Italy, some radiotoxicological analyses, on human urines, have been carried out, in order to determine the possible internal contamination of 241Am. After an in-depth study of a former extraction Chromatographic method, based on the use of Microthene-722 supporting HDEHP, a more suitable method has been developed and adopted in our laboratory, based on the use of TRU-Resin. This paper reports the results obtained with these two procedures as well as a comparison between them

Cyclotron production, Radiochemical separation and quality control of very high specific activity radiotracers for toxicological studies

The use of High Specific Activity Radiotracers, obtained by either proton or alpha cyclotron irradiation, followed by selective radiochemical separation from the irradiated target in No Carrier Added form, is a powerful analytical tool. The main applications of this method are related to toxicological, environmental and industrial studies, other than to nuclear medicine radiodiagnostic. Some relevant original data on the optimised cyclotron production of technetium and platinum \u3b3-emitting radionuclides are presented

Cyclotron production, radiochemical separation and quality control of platinum radiotracers for toxicological studies

The increasing concn. of Pt, Pd, and Rh in the environment is mainly due to the release of these elements from the catalytic converters of the motor vehicles. This situation makes it necessary to carry out metallotoxicol. expts. on both cell cultures and lab. animals, in order to assess their impact on living organisms after a long-term and low-level exposure (LLE). Both nuclear reactions natIr(p,xn) and natOs(\u3b1,xn) were investigated in the energy range up to 45 MeV for protons and 38 MeV for alpha-particles, to optimize the irradn. parameters for the prodn. of 188,189,191Pt. Several sets of thin- and thick-target excitation functions were detd. exptl. by cyclotron irradn. at both Milano and Ispra cyclotrons. This paper reports the irradn. parameters studied and adopted and two radiochem. procedures for the sepn. of radio-Pt from an Os target, as well as from ruthenium, iridium and gold impurities. These procedures were used to obtain very high specific activity Pt radionuclides in No Carrier Added (NCA) form. Radionuclidic, radiochem. and chem. purity measurements were carried out by the use of several techniques like \u3b3-spectrometry, ion-exchange radio-chromatog., at. absorption spectrometry, and neutron activation anal

Cyclotron production of Pt, Pd and Rh radiotracers to study the environmental impact of the catalytic converter emissions

Pt, Pd and Rh radioisotopes were produced by irradn. using both \u3b1 and proton beams of the SCANDITRONIX MC40 cyclotron of JRC-Ispra with iridium, osmium, palladium and rhodium targets. Preliminary exptl. yields of 189Pt, 188Pt, 191Pt, 103Pd, 100Rh and 101mRh isotopes, employed for biol. applications, are presented

High-resolution imaging of basal cell carcinoma: a comparison between multiphoton microscopy with fluorescence lifetime imaging and reflectance confocal microscopy

AIMS: The aim of this study was to compare morphological aspects of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) as assessed by two different imaging methods: in vivo reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) and multiphoton tomography with fluorescence lifetime imaging implementation (MPT-FLIM).METHODS: The study comprised 16 BCCs for which a complete set of RCM and MPT-FLIM images were available. The presence of seven MPT-FLIM descriptors was evaluated. The presence of seven RCM equivalent parameters was scored in accordance to their extension. Chi-squared test with Fisher's exact test and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient were determined between MPT-FLIM scores and adjusted-RCM scores.RESULTS: MPT-FLIM and RCM descriptors of BCC were coupled to match the descriptors that define the same pathological structures. The comparison included: Streaming and Aligned elongated cells, Streaming with multiple directions and Double alignment, Palisading (RCM) and Palisading (MPT-FLIM), Typical tumor islands, and Cell islands surrounded by fibers, Dark silhouettes and Phantom islands, Plump bright cells and Melanophages, Vessels (RCM), and Vessels (MPT-FLIM). The parameters that were significantly correlated were Melanophages/Plump Bright Cells, Aligned elongated cells/Streaming, Double alignment/Streaming with multiple directions, and Palisading (MPT-FLIM)/Palisading (RCM).CONCLUSION: According to our data, both methods are suitable to image BCC's features. The concordance between MPT-FLIM and RCM is high, with some limitations due to the technical differences between the two devices. The hardest difficulty when comparing the images generated by the two imaging modalities is represented by their different field of view