What is new in pediatric cardiac imaging?

Cardiac imaging has had significant influence on the science and practice of pediatric cardiology. Especially the development and improvements made in noninasive imaging techniques, like echocardiography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), have been extremely important. Technical advancements in the field of medical imaging are quickly being made. This review will focus on some of the important evolutions in pediatric cardiac imaging. Techniques such as intracardiac echocardiography, 3D echocardiography, and tissue Doppler imaging are relatively new echocardiographic techniques, which further optimize the anatomical and functional aspects of congenital heart disease. Also, the current standing of cardiac MRI and cardiac computerized tomography will be discussed. Finally, the recent European efforts to organize training and accreditation in pediatric echocardiography are highlighted

Feasibility of MRI-guided large-core-needle biopsy of suspiscious breast lesions at 3 T

The feasibility of large-core-needle magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided breast biopsy at 3 T was assessed. Thirty-one suspicious breast lesions shown only by MRI were detected in 30 patients. Biopsy procedures were performed in a closed-bore 3-T clinical MR system on a dedicated phased-array breast coil with a commercially available add-on stereotactic biopsy device. Tissue sampling was technically successful in 29/31 (94%) lesions. Median lesion size (n = 29) was 9 mm. Histopathological analysis showed 19 benign lesions (66%) and one inconclusive biopsy result (3%). At follow-up of these lesions, 15 lesions showed no malignancy, no information was available in three patients and two lesions turned out to be malignant (one lesion at surgical excision 1 month after biopsy and one lesion at a second biopsy because of a more malignant enhancement curve at 12-months follow-up MRI). Nine biopsy results showed a malignant lesion (31%) which were all surgically removed. No complications occurred. MRI-guided biopsy at 3 T is a safe and effective method for breast biopsy in lesions that are occult on mammography and ultrasound. Follow-up MRI at 6 months after the biopsy should be performed in case of a benign biopsy result

Image-guided focused ultrasound ablation of breast cancer: current status, challenges, and future directions

Image-guided focussed ultrasound (FUS) ablation is a non-invasive procedure that has been used for treatment of benign or malignant breast tumours. Image-guidance during ablation is achieved either by using real-time ultrasound (US) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The past decade phase I studies have proven MRI-guided and US-guided FUS ablation of breast cancer to be technically feasible and safe. We provide an overview of studies assessing the efficacy of FUS for breast tumour ablation as measured by percentages of complete tumour necrosis. Successful ablation ranged from 20% to 100%, depending on FUS system type, imaging technique, ablation protocol, and patient selection. Specific issues related to FUS ablation of breast cancer, such as increased treatment time for larger tumours, size of ablation margins, methods used for margin assessment and residual tumour detection after FUS ablation, and impact of FUS ablation on sentinel node procedure are presented. Finally, potential future applications of FUS for breast cancer treatment such as FUS-induced anti-tumour immune response, FUS-mediated gene transfer, and enhanced drug delivery are discussed. Currently, breast-conserving surgery remains the gold standard for breast cancer treatment

Real-time three-dimensional transthoracic echocardiography in daily practice: initial experience

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Aim of the work</p> <p>To evaluate the feasibility and possible additional value of transthoracic real-time three-dimensional echocardiography (RT3D-TTE) for the assessment of cardiac structures as compared to 2D-TTE.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>320 patients (mean age 45 ± 8.4 years, 75% males) underwent 2D-TTE and RT3D-TTE using 3DQ-Q lab software for offline analysis. Volume quantification and functional assessment was performed in 90 patients for left ventricle and in 20 patients for right ventricle. Assessment of native (112 patients) and prosthetic (30 patients) valves morphology and functions was performed. RT3D-TTE was performed for evaluation of septal defects in 30 patients and intracardiac masses in 52 patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>RT3D-TTE assessment of left ventricle was feasible and reproducible in 86% of patients while for right ventricle, it was (55%). RT3D-TTE could define the surface anatomy of mitral valve optimally (100%), while for aortic and tricuspid was (88% and 81% respectively). Valve area could be planimetered in 100% for the mitral and in 80% for the aortic. RT3D-TTE provided a comprehensive anatomical and functional evaluation of prosthetic valves. RT3D-TTE enface visualization of septal defects allowed optimal assessment of shape, size, area and number of defects and evaluated the outcome post device closure. RT3D-TTE allowed looking inside the intracardiac masses through multiple sectioning, valuable anatomical delineation and volume calculation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our initial experience showed that the use of RT3D-TTE in the assessment of cardiac patients is feasible and allowed detailed anatomical and functional assessment of many cardiac disorders.</p

Unassisted solar lignin valorisation using a compartmented photo-electro-biochemical cell

Lignin is a major component of lignocellulosic biomass. Although it is highly recalcitrant to break down, it is a very abundant natural source of valuable aromatic carbons. Thus, the effective valorisation of lignin is crucial for realising a sustainable biorefinery chain. Here, we report a compartmented photo-electro-biochemical system for unassisted, selective, and stable lignin valorisation, in which a TiO2 photocatalyst, an atomically dispersed Co-based electrocatalyst, and a biocatalyst (lignin peroxidase isozyme H8, horseradish peroxidase) are integrated, such that each system is separated using Nafion and cellulose membranes. This cell design enables lignin valorisation upon irradiation with sunlight without the need for any additional bias or sacrificial agent and allows the protection of the biocatalyst from enzymedamaging elements, such as reactive radicals, gas bubbles, and light. The photo-electrobiochemical system is able to catalyse lignin depolymerisation with a 98.7% selectivity and polymerisation with a 73.3% yield using coniferyl alcohol, a lignin monomer

Gender differences in the use of cardiovascular interventions in HIV-positive persons; the D:A:D Study

Peer reviewe

The peroxisome: still a mysterious organelle

More than half a century of research on peroxisomes has revealed unique features of this ubiquitous subcellular organelle, which have often been in disagreement with existing dogmas in cell biology. About 50 peroxisomal enzymes have so far been identified, which contribute to several crucial metabolic processes such as β-oxidation of fatty acids, biosynthesis of ether phospholipids and metabolism of reactive oxygen species, and render peroxisomes indispensable for human health and development. It became obvious that peroxisomes are highly dynamic organelles that rapidly assemble, multiply and degrade in response to metabolic needs. However, many aspects of peroxisome biology are still mysterious. This review addresses recent exciting discoveries on the biogenesis, formation and degradation of peroxisomes, on peroxisomal dynamics and division, as well as on the interaction and cross talk of peroxisomes with other subcellular compartments. Furthermore, recent advances on the role of peroxisomes in medicine and in the identification of novel peroxisomal proteins are discussed

Relativistic Binaries in Globular Clusters

Galactic globular clusters are old, dense star systems typically containing 10\super{4}--10\super{7} stars. As an old population of stars, globular clusters contain many collapsed and degenerate objects. As a dense population of stars, globular clusters are the scene of many interesting close dynamical interactions between stars. These dynamical interactions can alter the evolution of individual stars and can produce tight binary systems containing one or two compact objects. In this review, we discuss theoretical models of globular cluster evolution and binary evolution, techniques for simulating this evolution that leads to relativistic binaries, and current and possible future observational evidence for this population. Our discussion of globular cluster evolution will focus on the processes that boost the production of hard binary systems and the subsequent interaction of these binaries that can alter the properties of both bodies and can lead to exotic objects. Direct {\it N}-body integrations and Fokker--Planck simulations of the evolution of globular clusters that incorporate tidal interactions and lead to predictions of relativistic binary populations are also discussed. We discuss the current observational evidence for cataclysmic variables, millisecond pulsars, and low-mass X-ray binaries as well as possible future detection of relativistic binaries with gravitational radiation.Comment: 88 pages, 13 figures. Submitted update of Living Reviews articl

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research