Intraoperative detection of blood vessels with an imaging needle during neurosurgery in humans

Intracranial hemorrhage can be a devastating complication associated with needle biopsies of the brain. Hemorrhage can occur to vessels located adjacent to the biopsy needle as tissue is aspirated into the needle and removed. No intraoperative technology exists to reliably identify blood vessels that are at risk of damage. To address this problem, we developed an “imaging needle” that can visualize nearby blood vessels in real time. The imaging needle contains a miniaturized optical coherence tomography probe that allows differentiation of blood flow and tissue. In 11 patients, we were able to intraoperatively detect blood vessels (diameter, \u3e500 μm) with a sensitivity of 91.2% and a specificity of 97.7%. This is the first reported use of an optical coherence tomography needle probe in human brain in vivo. These results suggest that imaging needles may serve as a valuable tool in a range of neurosurgical needle interventions

Preparation of poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene ether) (PPE) and polyamide-6 blends via activated anionic polymerization of PPE and ε-caprolactam solutions

Activated anionic polymn. of homogeneous PPE/e-caprolactam solns. below the m.p. of polyamide-6 (PA-6) in the presence of a catalyst results in the prepn. of PPE/PA-6 blends. The morphol. of these blends consists of a continuous PPE and dispersed PA-6 phase or vice versa, depending on the PPE concn. The particle size of the dispersed PA-6 phase in the continuous PPE matrix is detd. by the viscosit

Effective interaction parameter between topologically distinct polymers

The magnitude of the thermodynamic interaction in a bulk binary homopolymer blend due to regular branching alone has been estimated from small angle neutron scattering (SANS) measurements for the first time using blends of star and linear poly(styrene)s of well defined structure. The value of χ for a blend of deuterated four arm star (M=100 000 g/mol) with hydrogenous linear polystyrene (M=132 000 g/mol) of comparable molecular weight is χ=0.1278/T−0.0002 over the temperature range of 120–225°C for a segment volume of 100 cm3/mol. The contribution to χ ascribable to architecture effects is just distinguishable from that due to isotopic substitution alone and in surprisingly good agreement with an approximate prediction from a mean field theory. The precise value of χ varies depending on which component is labeled

Detonation Structure Simulation with AMROC

Numerical simulations can be the key to the thorough understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of transient detonation waves. But th