The transcription factor OCT-4 is regarded as a critical factor in controlling mammalian early embryonic development because of its role in toti-/pluripotency. In human preimplantation embryos, OCT-4 studies are limited to RNA analysis of abnormally developing embryos. This study thoroughly investigated the expression pattern of OCT-4 throughout the human preimplantation development. Expression...

Background: Conventional contrast cineangiography and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) provide a limited definition of vessel microstructure and are unable to evaluate dissection, tissue prolapse, and stent apposition on a size scale less than 100 μm. Objective: To evaluate the use of intravascular optical coherence tomography (OCT) to assess the coronary arteries in patients undergoing coronary...

The primary optimization of the imaging speed optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been keenly studied. In order to overcome major limitation spectral-domain OCT (SD-OCT), we developed an ultrahigh-speed SD-OCT system, with A-scan rate up 1 MHz, using method space–time-division multiplexing (STDM). Multicameras comprising a single spectrometer were implemented in STDM eliminate dead time oper...

This study was aimed to investigate the fundus changes of patients with pregnancy-induced hypertension syndrome (PIHS) using optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology and contrast sensitivity (CS) tests.Ninety-eight patients with PIHS underwent routine eye examinations including vision correction, fundus examination, OCT, and CS tests. The CS test was performed at low, medium, and high freq...

BACKGROUND Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an optical imaging method that produces high-resolution cross-sectional images of the esophagus. The accuracy of OCT for differentiating tissue types at the squamocolumnar junction (SCJ) has not been established. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to identify and validate OCT image criteria for distinguishing metaplastic from nonmetaplasti...

BACKGROUND During fetal hypoxia blood is redistributed to the brain ('brain-sparing'). Sequential changes of the cerebral and placental circulation in parallel in comparisons between basal conditions and acute hypoxic stress have not yet been thoroughly studied in human fetuses. AIM To explore acute fetal middle cerebral artery (MCA) circulatory changes relative to umbilical artery (UA) blood...

PURPOSE To explore the application of optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging of basal cell carcinomas (BCC) and actinic keratosis (AK) before, during and after imiquimod treatment and the ability of OCT to predict treatment outcome. METHODS The study subjects were 20 patients with biopsy-verified BCC (9) or AK (11). Patients were OCT-scanned before, after 1 and 4 weeks of imiquimod treatm...

Octamer transcription factors (Oct or OTF) are a subset of the POU family of transcription factors which regulate transcription of cellular and viral genes by binding to the octamer sequence motif ATGCAAAT. Neurons and astroglial cells harbour, in addition to the ubiquitous Oct 1 factor, at least four specific factors termed N-Oct 2,3,4 and 5. Here we report the cloning of a human brain-derived...

PURPOSE The aims of the present study were to compare the image quality and visibility of tooth cracks between conventional methods and swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) and to develop an automatic detection technique for tooth cracks by SS-OCT imaging. METHODS We evaluated SS-OCT with a near-infrared wavelength centered at 1,310 nm over a spectral bandwidth of 100 nm at a ra...

AIM To investigate the presentation of a patch-stage cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) using optical coherence tomography (OCT). METHODS A patient with a patch caused by CTCL was photographed digitally, OCT-scanned and biopsied. A normal skin area adjacent to the patch was OCT-scanned for comparison, but not biopsied. The OCT image and the histological image were compared. RESULTS The OCT im...