BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE We attempted ultrasonographic evaluation of the distal extracranial internal carotid artery (ICA) using the transoral method (transoral carotid ultrasonography [TOCU]). METHODS The subjects consisted of five healthy volunteers and seven stroke patients. Examinations were performed with a color Doppler flow imaging system equipped with convex array transducers (7 or 9.5 ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Carotid artery dissection (CAD) is more common with increased styloid process length. Our goal was to determine whether proximity of the styloid process and the hyoid bone to the internal carotid artery (ICA) was a risk factor for CAD. METHODS We studied axial slices on computed tomography angiograms of 88 patients with nonaneurysmal CAD, from 88 age- and sex-matched co...

A 72-year-old man presented with a 3-day history of recurrent transient ischaemic attacks comprising slurred speech, left arm weakness and paresthesia. Carotid Doppler revealed total occlusion of the right internal carotid artery (ICA). Computed tomography angiography demonstrated occlusion of the proximal right ICA over a length of 1.5 cm. The ICA distal to the occlusion was entirely normal. I...

Recently, Independent Component Analysis (ICA) has been applied to not only problems of blind signal separation, but also feature extraction of patterns. However, the effectiveness of features extracted by ICA (ICA features) has not been verified yet. As one of the reasons, it is considered that ICA features are obtained by increasing their independence rather than by increasing their class sep...

We propose an unsupervised methodology using independent component analysis (ICA) to cluster genes from DNA microarray data. Based on an ICA mixture model of genomic expression patterns, linear and nonlinear ICA finds components that are specific to certain biological processes. Genes that exhibit significant up-regulation or down-regulation within each component are grouped into clusters. We t...

To study the effects of myocardial hypertrophy resulting from chronic pressure overload on excitation-contraction coupling, the cardiac transmembrane L-type calcium current (ICa) was investigated in the Goldblatt renovascular hypertensive (HBP) rat. ICa was measured in single myocytes enzymatically isolated from control (CTRL) and HBP rat hearts using the whole-cell, patch-clamp method. The pea...

BACKGROUND Independent component analysis (ICA) has been often used to decompose fMRI data mostly for the resting-state, block and event-related designs due to its outstanding advantage. For fMRI data during free-listening experiences, only a few exploratory studies applied ICA. NEW METHOD For processing the fMRI data elicited by 512-s modern tango, a FFT based band-pass filter was used to fu...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) and carotid disease have medical and social significance, considering their morbidity, disability, and economic consequences. The study objectives were to determine the prevalence of asymptomatic internal carotid artery (ICA) lesions ≥70% in patients with AAA, the correlation of AAA diameter with the degree of ICA stenosis and symptoms, ...

In this paper, independent component analysis (ICA) is used for blind source separation of biomedical signals. Visual and quantitative tests of the ability of ICA to separate signals were performed using a fast ICA algorithm. Results obtained from simulated and FECG signals show that the ICA performance using the whitening matrix of the mixed signals was superior to that of random initial weights.

BACKGROUND Large artery atherosclerosis is a major cause of ischemic stroke worldwide. Differential biomarker profiles associated with extra- and intracranial atherosclerosis are a topic of considerable interest. Cystatin C (CysC), a marker of renal function, is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. AIM We sought to determine whether CysC levels were associated with extra- and intracrania...