Journal of neuroimaging : official journal of the American Society of Neuroimaging
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The diagnosis of Chiari malformation type I (CMI) relies on MRI identification of a tonsillar descent (TD) through the foramen magnum, reflecting the overcrowding of an underdeveloped posterior cranial fossa (PCF). However, TD occurs in some patients with normal-sized PCF and, conversely, some patients with borderline or no TD have small PCF. We thus sought to identify a set of prototypic PCF measures for the diagnosis of CMI. ⋯ The addition of simple morphometric measurements in the diagnostic work-up of patients with suspected CMI may facilitate radiological diagnosis. Moreover, identification of the subset of CMI that arise from basichondrocranium underdevelopment is important for both, selection of the most appropriate therapeutic approach as well as proper CMI categorization in research studies.
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Clinical Trial
Early changes in brain FDG metabolism during anticancer therapy in patients with pharyngeal cancer.
The current study aimed to evaluate whether therapy-related changes occurred in brain metabolism at an earlier stage during the course of anticancer therapy. ⋯ The current study revealed that unappreciable changes in brain metabolism can occur during the early course of anticancer therapy, and persist even after therapy has terminated. Although the exact mechanism remains unclear, these changes may be related to the systemic effects of chemotherapy or radiotherapy as well as subclinical cancer-related depressive or adjustment mood disorder.
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In multiple sclerosis (MS) the individual disease courses are very heterogeneous among patients and biomarkers for setting the diagnosis and the estimation of the prognosis for individual patients would be very helpful. For this purpose, we are developing a multidisciplinary method and workflow for the quantitative, spatial, and spatiotemporal analysis and characterization of MS lesion patterns from MRI with geostatistics. ⋯ This method in development is a promising candidate to complement standard image-based statistics by incorporating spatial quantification. The work flow is generic and not limited to analyzing MS lesion patterns. It can be completely automated for the screening of radiological archives.
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Susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) is a recently developed high resolution 3-dimensional gradient-echo pulse sequence that accentuates the magnetic susceptibility of blood, calcium, and nonheme iron. The clinical applications of SWI in pediatric neuroimaging have significantly expanded recently. Potential pitfalls related to blood oxygenation, blood flow, magnetic field strength, and misinterpretation of localization as well as possible mimickers may be misleading and affect the correct interpretation of SWI images. Familiarity with these potential diagnostic pitfalls is important to prevent misdiagnosis and will further enhance the ability of SWI in becoming a robust and reliable technique.