Functional Electrical Stimulation Leads to Increased Volume of the Aged Thyroarytenoid Muscle.

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS: To reverse sarcopenia and increase the volumes of atrophied laryngeal muscles by functional electrical stimulation (FES) using a minimal invasive surgical procedure in an aged ovine model. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective animal study. METHODS: A stimulation electrode was placed unilaterally near the terminal adduction branch of the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) adjacent to the right cricothyroid joint. The electrode was connected to an implant located subcutaneously at the neck region. Predesigned training patterns were automatically delivered by a bidirectional radio frequency link using a programming device and were repeated automatically by the implant every other day over 11 weeks in the awake animal. Outcome parameters comprised volumetric measurements based on three-dimensional reconstructions of the entire thyroarytenoid muscle (TAM), as well as gene expression analyses. RESULTS: We found significant increases of the volumes of the stimulated TAM of 11% and the TAM diameter at the midmembranous parts of the vocal folds of nearly 40%. Based on gene expression, we did not detect a shift of muscle fiber composition. CONCLUSIONS: FES of the terminal branches of the RLN is a secure and effective way to reverse the effects of age-related TAM atrophy and to increase volumes of atrophied muscles. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: NA Laryngoscope, 2018

High-resolution contrast enhanced multi-phase hepatic computed tomography data fromaporcine Radio-Frequency Ablation study

Data below 1 mm voxel size is getting more and more common in the clinical practice but it is still hard to obtain a consistent collection of such datasets for medical image processing research. With this paper we provide a large collection of Contrast Enhanced (CE) Computed Tomography (CT) data from porcine animal experiments and describe their acquisition procedure and peculiarities. We have acquired three CE-CT phases at the highest available scanner resolution of 57 porcine livers during induced respiratory arrest. These phases capture contrast enhanced hepatic arteries, portal venous veins and hepatic veins. Therefore, we provide scan data that allows for a highly accurate reconstruction of hepatic vessel trees. Several datasets have been acquired during Radio-Frequency Ablation (RFA) experiments. Hence, many datasets show also artificially induced hepatic lesions, which can be used for the evaluation of structure detection methods