AJNR. American journal of neuroradiology
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AJNR Am J Neuroradiol · Nov 1999
Acute stroke evaluated by time-to-peak mapping during initial and early follow-up perfusion CT studies.
Early diagnosis of perfusion deficits in patients with acute stroke could guide treatment decisions and improve prognosis. We investigated the sensitivity of perfusion CT studies using parametric time-to-peak maps to assess ischemic brain tissue with respect to early infarct signs on native CT scans. ⋯ Perfusion CT is potentially useful for detecting cerebral perfusion deficits in acute ischemic stroke before morphologic changes are observable on native CT scans. Compared with a locally restricted ROI-based evaluation, time-to-peak maps provide sensitive, global indications of malperfused brain areas, facilitate lesion localization, and allow assessment of the evolution of the infarction during follow-up.
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Although the central processing of somatic pain has been dealt with in numerous brain imaging studies, the neural correlates of visceral pain have received much more limited attention. Our goal was to assess the feasibility of detecting brain activation patterns induced by rectal pain by means of functional MR imaging. We hypothesized that the cerebral processing of rectal pain would exhibit strong similarities with the central processing of somatic pain. ⋯ Functional MR imaging of visceral pain is feasible in healthy subjects. The activation patterns observed in this study support the hypothesis that the cerebral processing of visceral pain involves multiple components, similar to the central processing of somatic pain. Our results constitute a first step toward the identification of possible aberrations in the activation patterns of patients suffering from visceral hypersensitivity.
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AJNR Am J Neuroradiol · Oct 1999
Case ReportsDisseminated coccidioidomycosis complicated by vasculitis: a cause of fatal subarachnoid hemorrhage in two cases.
We describe two cases of disseminated coccidioidomycosis that were complicated by fatal subarachnoid hemorrhage. In the first case, a left middle cerebral artery aneurysm and long-segment vasculitis occurred. In the second case, MR imaging revealed an enlarging coccidioidal granuloma at the tip of the basilar artery, and the artery subsequently ruptured. Fatal intracranial hemorrhage is a rare complication of disseminated coccidioidomycosis.
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AJNR Am J Neuroradiol · Oct 1999
Comparison of three MR sequences for the detection of cervical cord lesions in patients with multiple sclerosis.
Improving the sensitivity of MR imaging for the detection of multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions in the cord might be useful in the diagnostic workup and could lead to a better understanding of the evolution of the disease. The purpose of this study was to compare fast spin-echo (FSE) with magnetization transfer-prepared gradient-echo (MT-GE) and fast short-inversion-time inversion recovery (fast-STIR) MR sequences to determine which is best for imaging cervical cord lesions in MS patients. ⋯ Both MT-GE and fast-STIR sequences depict more cervical cord MS lesions than the FSE sequence, with fast-STIR having the best sensitivity. Fast-STIR MR images may be useful for the diagnostic workup of patients with suspected MS and for improving our understanding of the evolution of MS.