Background: Distinguishing behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) from non-neurodegenerative ‘non-progressor’ mimics of frontal lobe dysfunction, can be one of the most challenging clinical dilemmas. A biomarker of neuronal injury, neurofilament light chain (NfL), could reduce misdiagnosis and delay. Methods: Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) NfL, amyloid beta 1–42 (AB42), total and phosphory

We report a spatially resolved spectroscopic study of the visible chemiluminescence emission from different premixed ammonia-air-oxygen flames stabilized on a laminar flat flame burner, with equivalence ratio ranging from 0.7 to 1.35 and an O2/N2 ratio of 0.4. In the reaction zone of the observed flames, the visible emission was recognized to be the chemiluminescence of excited NH2* radicals, whil

Global warming may lead to carbon transfers from soils to the atmosphere, yet this positive feedback to the climate system remains highly uncertain, especially in subsoils . Using natural geothermal soil warming gradients of up to +6.4C in subarctic grasslands , we show that soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks decline strongly and linearly with warming (-2.8tha-1C-1). Comparison of SOC stock changes

Background: Dietary pattern analysis has gained particular interest, because it reflects the complexity of dietary intake. The aim of this study was to explore the associations between a posteriori dietary patterns, derived using a data-driven approach, and the risk of differentiated thyroid cancer (TC) in Europe. Methods: This investigation included 450,064 adults from the European Prospective In

Background: Mitral annular plane systolic excursion (MAPSE) and left ventricular (LV) early diastolic velocity (e’) are key metrics of systolic and diastolic function, but not often measured by cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). Its derivation is possible with manual, precise annotation of the mitral valve (MV) insertion points along the cardiac cycle in both two and four-chamber long-axis c

Wall shear stress (WSS) distribution in the human aorta is a highly interesting hemodynamic factor for atherosclerosis development. We present a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based subject specific WSS estimation method and demonstrate it on a group of nine healthy volunteers (males age 23.6 ± 1.3 years). In all nine subjects, the aortic blood flow was sim

This paper describes a novel method for regional characterization of three-dimensional vector fields using a pattern matching approach. Given a three-dimensional vector field, the goal is to automatically locate, identify, and visualize a selected set of classes of structures or features. Rather than analytically defining the properties that must be fulfilled in a region in order to be classified

A four-dimensional mapping (three spatial dimensions + time) of myocardial strain-rate would help to describe the mechanical properties of the myocardium, which affect important physiological factors such as the pumping performance of the ventricles. Strain-rate represents the local instantaneous deformation of the myocardium and can be calculated from the spatial gradients of the velocity field.

Echocardiographic quantification of myocardial perfusion after IV contrast is possible, based on the intensity of the received intermittent second harmonic signal. To investigate the influence of respiration on the intensity of myocardial signals, we examined nine patients with normal coronary angiograms. At baseline, end-expiratory and end-inspiratory images were obtained in broadband radiofreque

The distortion of a sound wave during propagation results in progressive transfer of the energy from fundamental to higher harmonics, and is dependent on the nonlinearity of the medium. We studied if relative changes in acoustical nonlinearity occur in healthy myocardium during the cardiac cycle. Radiofrequency data were acquired from transthoracic echocardiography (2.5 and 3.5 MHz), parasternal l

The clinical evaluation of regional delays in myocardial motion (myocardial asynchrony) has proved problematic, yet it remains an important functional parameter to evaluate. Prior attempts to quantify regional asynergy have met with limited success, often thwarted by the low temporal resolution of imaging-system data acquisition. If a delay in onset of motion of 30-40 msec is clinically important