BACKGROUND NKT cell is a population of unconventional T cells that mediate both innate and adaptive T cell responses. Since NKT cells are most abundant in the liver, much of NKT biology has been learnt from studies of NKT cells isolated from liver. This is a cumbersome procedure with variations in cell yield. RESULTS Based on recent evidence that NKT cells reside in liver vascular compartment...

The success of liver transplantation has resulted in a dramatic organ shortage. In most transplant regions 20-30% of patients on the waiting list for liver transplantation die without receiving an organ transplant or are delisted for disease progression. One strategy to increase the donor pool is the utilization of marginal grafts, such as fatty livers, grafts from older donors, or donation aft...

Liver transplantation is a major life-saving procedure, and donation after cardiac death (DCD) has increased the pool of potential liver donors. However, DCD livers are at increased risk of primary graft dysfunction and biliary tract ischaemia. Normothermic extracorporeal liver perfusion (NELP) may increase the ability to protect, evaluate and, in future, transplant DCD livers. We conducted pro...

Tissue perfusion plays a critical role in oncology because growth and migration of cancerous cells require proliferation of new blood vessels through the process of tumor angiogenesis. Computed tomography (CT) perfusion is an emerging functional imaging modality that measures tissue perfusion through dynamic CT scanning following intravenous administration of contrast medium. This noninvasive t...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate perfusion of abdominal organs in healthy cats by use of contrast-enhanced ultrasonography. ANIMALS 10 young healthy anesthetized cats. PROCEDURES Contrast-enhanced ultrasonography of the liver, left kidney, pancreas, small intestine, and mesenteric lymph nodes was performed on anesthetized cats. RESULTS Typical perfusion patterns were found for each of the studied or...

PURPOSE To develop a postprocessing method to correct saturation of arterial input function (AIF) in T1-weighted dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) for quantification of hepatic perfusion. MATERIALS AND METHODS The saturated AIF is corrected by parameterizing the first pass of the AIF as a smooth function with a single peak and minimizing a least-squares error in f...

Liver Perfusion gives important information about blood supply of liver. However, in daily clinical diagnosis, radiologists have to manually mark the perfusion position in time-sequence images due to the motion of liver caused by respiration. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid method using a variation of active contours and modified chamfer matching to automatically detect the liver perfu...

The effects of warm machine perfusion preservation of liver grafts donated after cardiac death on the intracellular three-dimensional ultrastructure of the organelles in hepatocytes remain unclear. Here we analyzed comparatively the ultrastructure of the endomembrane systems in porcine hepatocytes under warm ischemia and successive hypothermic and midthermic machine perfusion preservation, a ty...

OBJECTIVE To assess the influence of prolonged pneumoperitoneum (PP) on liver function and perfusion in a clinically relevant porcine model of laparoscopic abdominal insufflation. BACKGROUND PP during laparoscopic surgery produces increased intra-abdominal pressure, which potentially influences hepatic function and microcirculatory perfusion. METHODS Six pigs (49.6 ± 5.8 kg) underwent lapar...

A case in which hepatic artery perfusion scintigraphy (HAPS) correctly predicted the outcome of chemotherapy in a patient with metastatic liver disease is presented. In spite of angiography showing "proper" position of the Infusaid catheter, HAPS showed preferential perfusion to the right lobe of the liver. Computed tomography pre- and postchemotherapy showed a changing pattern of the metastati...