Myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE) allows the assessment of myocardial perfusion by imaging the coronary microcirculation. The development of new contrast agents and new diagnostic tools far assessing myocardial perfusion by means of MCE has led to a new field of applications far patients suffering from ischemic heart disease. Several studies have shown that MCE is a feasible and accura...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES After a myocardial infarction, damage to the microcirculation indicates a worse prognosis. We compared the usefulness of the quantitative analysis of myocardial contrast echocardiography with intravenous injection of contrast (MCE-iv) with intracoronary injection (MCE-ic) for analyzing coronary perfusion. PATIENTS AND METHOD We studied 42 patients with a first ST-e...

This paper deals with video segmentation based on motion and spatial information. Classically, the nucleus of the motion term is the motion compensation error (MCE) between two consecutive frames. Defining a motion-based energy as the integral of a function of the MCE over the object domain implicitly results in making an assumption on the MCE distribution: Gaussian for the square function, Lap...

OBJECTIVE To examine the relation between the initial microvascular perfusion pattern, as assessed by intracoronary myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE), immediately after restoration of TIMI (thrombolysis in myocardial infarction) (TIMI) grade 3 flow during acute myocardial infarction, and the extent and timing of functional recovery in the area at risk. SETTING Referral centre for int...

The biological activities of sequential combinations of anticancer drugs, SOS thiophene (SOS) and mesochlorin e 6 monoethylenediamine (Mce 6), in the form of free drugs, nontargeted N-(2-hydroxypropyl)methacrylamide (HPMA) copolymer-drug conjugates, P-GFLG-Mce 6 and P-GFLG-SOS (P is the HPMA copolymer backbone and GFLG is the glycylphenylalanylleucylglycine spacer), and Fab'-targeted HPMA copol...

BACKGROUND It remains unclear whether myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE) is as accurate as myocardial perfusion imaging with technetium-99m sestamibi (MPI) for the diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). We sought to directly compare the diagnostic accuracy of MCE with resting MPI in a head-to-head fashion. METHODS We prospectively enrolled 98 consecutive patients (mean age; 59+/-...

Microchip electrophoresis (MCE) has been advanced remarkably by the applications of several separation modes and the integration with several chemical operations on a single planer substrate. MCE shows superior analytical performance, e.g., high-speed analysis, high resolution, low consumption of reagents, and so on, whereas low-concentration sensitivity is still one of the major problems. To o...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to investigate the clinical usefulness of myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE) to distinguish stress-induced cardiomyopathy (SCMP) from acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in the emergency department (ED). METHODS AND RESULTS We investigated 51 patients (62±13 years, 29 women) who had suspected SCMP in the ED with acute chest pain and showed apical...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the accuracy of adenosine myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE) in diagnosing coronary artery disease (CAD). BACKGROUND Adenosine stress echocardiography is not routinely used in the assessment of CAD. Since ultrasound microbubble contrast agents enable improved wall motion analysis and simultaneous assessment of myocardial perfusion, we sought to evaluate the diag...

Methylmalonyl-coA epimerase (MCE) follows propionyl-coA carboxylase and precedes methylmalonyl-coA mutase in the pathway converting propionyl-coA to succinyl-coA. MCE deficiency has previously been described in six patients, one presenting with metabolic acidosis, the others with nonspecific neurological symptoms or asymptomatic. The clinical significance and biochemical characteristics of this...