80 research outputs found

    Influenza A positive but H1N1 negative myocarditis in a patient coming from a high outbreak region of new influenza

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    We present the case of a 21 year-old man holidaying on the Spanish island of Mallorca, a region of high outbreak of infections with a new influenza A/H1N1 virus. Symptomatic influenza A infection, but not H1N1 positive, led to myocarditis after intimate contact with a woman with positive H1N1 titer. The electrocardiogram showed T-wave inversions in II, III, aVF and V5, V6. Serum chemistry showed elevated levels of troponin T, increased creatine kinase (CK) and CK myocardial band. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging revealed mid- -myocardial and subepicardial hyperintensities in the lateral wall, and subepicardial and mid-myocardial areas of gadolinium enhancement in the inferior wall. Despite intimate contact with an H1N1 positive patient, the analyses on H1N1 (H1 A/Brisbane/59/07, H1 A/ /California/7/09swine) were negative, but were positive for common influenza (H3 A/Brisbane/ /10/07). Myocarditis is a rare clinical manifestation of influenza A infection. (Cardiol J 2011; 18, 4: 441–445

    Evaluating the Performance of Ultra-Low-Field MRI for In-vivo 3D Current Density Imaging of the Human Head

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    Magnetic fields associated with currents flowing in tissue can be measured non-invasively by means of zero-field-encoded ultra-low-field magnetic resonance imaging (ULF MRI) enabling current density imaging (CDI) and possibly conductivity mapping of human head tissues. Since currents applied to a human are limited by safety regulations and only a small fraction of the current passes through the relatively high-resistive skull, a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) may be difficult to obtain when using this method. In this work, we study the relationship between the image SNR and the SNR of the field reconstructions from zero-field-encoded data. We evaluate these results for two existing ULF MRI scanners, one ultra-sensitive single-channel system and one whole-head multi-channel system, by simulating sequences necessary for current-density reconstruction. We also derive realistic current-density and magnetic-field estimates from finite-element-method simulations based on a three-compartment head model. We found that existing ULF-MRI systems reach sufficient SNR to detect intra-cranial current distributions with statistical uncertainty below 10%. However, they also reveal that image artifacts influence the reconstruction quality. Further, our simulations indicate that current-density reconstruction in the scalp requires a resolution less than 5 mm and demonstrate that the necessary sensitivity coverage can be accomplished by multi-channel devices.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 68686
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