Quantifying Risk Factors for Human Brucellosis in Rural Northern Tanzania

Brucellosis is a zoonosis of veterinary, public health and economic significance in most developing countries. Human brucellosis is a severely debilitating disease that requires prolonged treatment with a combination of antibiotics. The disease can result in permanent and disabling sequel, and results in considerable medical expenses in addition to loss of income due to loss of working hours. A study was conducted in Northern Tanzania to determine the risk factors for transmission of brucellosis to humans in Tanzania. This was a matched case-control study. Any patient with a positive result by a competitive ELISA (c-ELISA) test for brucellosis, and presenting to selected hospitals with at least two clinical features suggestive of brucellosis such as headache, recurrent or continuous fever, sweating, joint pain, joint swelling, general body malaise or backache, was defined as a case. For every case in a district, a corresponding control was traced and matched by sex using multistage cluster sampling. Other criteria for inclusion as a control included a negative c-ELISA test result and that the matched individual would present to hospital if falls sick. Multivariable analysis showed that brucellosis was associated with assisted parturition during abortion in cattle, sheep or goat. It was shown that individuals living in close proximity to other households had a higher risk of brucellosis. People who were of Christian religion were found to have a higher risk of brucellosis compared to other religions. The study concludes that assisting an aborting animal, proximity to neighborhoods, and Christianity were associated with brucellosis infection. There was no association between human brucellosis and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) serostatus. Protecting humans against contact with fluids and tissues during assisted parturition of livestock may be an important means of reducing the risk of transferring brucellosis from livestock to humans. These can be achieved through health education to the communities where brucellosis is common

Automated Evaluation of Brain Atrophy Based on MRI: Clinical Experience

info:eu-repo/semantics/published46the Annual Meeting ASNR (New Orleans) June 200

A Monte Carlo simulation of image misalignment effects in diffusion tensor imaging.

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and tractography are noninvasive MRI methods, providing an insight on microscopic structural information of anisotropic tissues in vivo. The success of this technique stems on a watchful choice of imaging parameters and post-acquisition reconstruction. In the present work, we have focused on the problem of residual linear image misalignment in the DTI data and its effects on the parameters of the diffusion tensor and fiber tracking in human brain. We demonstrate substantial sensitivity of the reconstructed diffusion tensor and fiber tractography on increasing amplitude of artificially induced random image misalignment in the DTI. We show that already a submillimeter image misalignment in the DTI is an important source of error, which may potentially mask pathological presentations of the diseases and may partially explain variations in the results obtained from the DTI. Finally, we evaluated four implementations of image registrations and demonstrate their variable performance. This further supports the fact that a robust image registration must be performed to ensure reliable and reproducible diffusion tensor mapping and reconstruction of white matter (WM) fibers.Evaluation StudiesJournal ArticleSCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Assessment of non-rigid registration in diffusion tensor tractography of human spinal cord

Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Evaluation of Brain Morphology and Topology in Huntington's Disease: Preliminary Results

info:eu-repo/semantics/published46the Annual Meeting ASNR (New Orleans) June 200

Probabilistic Diffusion Tensor Tractography of Human Spinal Cord and Spinal Nerves

Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Medinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Diffusion-Weighted MRI (DWI) in Ovarian Masses: Value of DWI compared to T2 and T1-weighted MRI and Histopathological Findings

Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Medinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Update of diagnostic preoperative images using low-field interventional MRI for navigation in neurosurgery: Rigid-body registration

SCOPUS: cp.pinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe