PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the biomechanical behavior of the lumbar spine after posterior decompression with the spinous process osteotomy (SPiO) technique or the conventional laminectomy (CL) technique using a finite element (FE) model. MATERIALS AND METHODS Three validated lumbar FE models (L2-5) which represented intact spine and two decompression models ...

Multifunctional nanoparticle-mediated imaging and therapeutic techniques are promising modalities for accurate localization and targeted treatment of cancer in clinical settings. Thermoacoustic (TA) imaging is highly sensitive to detect the distribution of water, ions or specific nanoprobes and provides excellent resolution, good contrast and superior tissue penetrability. TA therapy is a poten...

OBJECT We sought to detect an acute soft tissue infection in rats by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using granulocytes, previously labeled with superparamagnetic particles of iron oxide (SPIO). MATERIALS AND METHODS Parasternal infection was induced by subcutaneous inoculation of Staphylococcus aureus suspension in rats. Granulocytes isolated from isogenic donor rats were labeled with SPIO....

In many clinical cases of radicular pain, no noticeable neuropathology is detected by conventional medical imaging strategies. Superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles were evaluated as magnetic resonance contrast agents to specifically detect neuroinflammation at sites of painful injury in a rat model of cervical nerve root compression. Two separate groups of rats were used: an injury...

Multifunctional and water-soluble superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanocarriers were developed for targeted drug delivery and positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MRI) dual-modality imaging of tumors with integrin α(v)β₃ expression. An anticancer drug was conjugated onto the PEGylated SPIO nanocarriers via pH-sensitive bonds. Tumor-targeting ligands, cyclo(Arg-Gly-Asp...

Stem cell based therapies offer significant potential in the field of regenerative medicine. The development of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticle labeling and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have been increasingly used to track the transplanted cells, enabling in vivo determination of cell fate. However, the impact of SPIO-labeling on the cell phenotype and differentiation capac...

A promising new direction for contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) imaging involves tracking the migration and biodistribution of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO)-labeled cells in vivo. Despite the large number of cell labeling studies that have been performed with SPIO particles of differing size and surface charge, it remains unclear which SPIO configuration provides optimal contrast ...

Introduction: Dark T2* contrast of SPIO has been widely used in cell tracking in molecular MRI [1, 2], but this negative contrast may be indistinguishable from ones generated by air bubbles that are commonly observed in gel phantoms due to their porous nature. In this study, we propose to distinguish air bubbles from SPIO labeled cells by quantifying the magnetization at two different field str...

OBJECTIVE To emphasize the contribution of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) contrast agent in the diagnosis of the splenic hamartoma. CLINICAL PRESENTATION AND INTERVENTION A 63-year-old female was admitted to our hospital with diffuse abdominal pain. An ultrasound examination revealed a 5 × 4 cm solid lesion in the spleen. Dynamic gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of th...

We report initial results from studies using sweep imaging with Fourier transformation (SWIFT) to detect superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) particle-labeled stem cells in the rat heart. In experiments performed on phantoms containing titanium balls or SPIO-labeled cells, frequency-shifted signals surrounding the paramagnetic objects produced a pileup artifact visualized by SWIFT. Total signal ...