BACKGROUND The evidence suggests that arterial stiffness acts as an independent predictor of general as well as cardiovascular mortality, strokes in patients with arterial hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus in the elderly, and in the general population. The oscillometric method measures parameters of arterial stiffness by applying special methods of processing oscillograms. This is a study ...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to analyze reproducibility and inter-observer variability of dobutamine stress cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (dobutamine CMR) and its implications on serial studies. METHODS Nineteen consecutive patients underwent two dobutamine CMR each (median 12 days apart), as part of eligibility criteria for phase I/II stem cell therapy trial. These patients had...

BACKGROUND Native T1 mapping is a cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) technique that associates with markers of fibrosis and strain in hemodialysis patients. The reproducibility of T1 mapping in hemodialysis patients, prone to changes in fluid status, is unknown. Accurate quantification of myocardial fibrosis in this population has prognostic potential. METHODS Using 3 Tesla CMR, we repor...

Purpose: To improve liver iron load assessment by investigating the precision of different approaches of T2 Measurement. Background: Iron overload is a major problem in the treatment of thalassemic patients. Liver iron concentration (LIC) is an important index toward the management of body iron load. The accuracy of iron load estimation may suffer from the methodology of T2 measurement and ther...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The recently developed histological scoring system for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) by the NASH Clinical Research Network (NASH-CRN) has been widely used in clinical settings, but is increasingly employed in preclinical research as well. However, it has not been systematically analyzed whether the human scoring system can directly be converted to preclinical rod...

Arterial stiffness potently predicts mortality in dialysis patients. Pulse-wave analysis permits the non-invasive assessment of indices of arterial stiffness and the central pressure waveform by applanation tonometry. The aim of this study was to assess the reproducibility of pulse-wave analysis in patients with chronic renal failure. A total of 188 subjects (23 healthy controls, along with 71 ...

In the past we have proposed a pseudo-colorimetric imaging system for dermatological uses. The system exhibits moderate accuracy, but high precision or reproducibility. Acquired images are stored in the welldefined gamma-corrected sRGB color space. This color space has a known relationship to the perceptually uniform CIE L∗a∗b∗ color space, which allows the development of segmentation methods b...

AIMS The objectives of the present study are to describe the algorithm for VH(®) IVUS using the 45-MHz rotational IVUS catheter and the associated ex vivo validation in comparison to the gold standard histology. METHODS AND RESULTS The first phase of the present study was to construct the 45 MHz VH IVUS algorithm by using a total of 55 human coronary artery specimens [111 independent coronary...

The American Heart Association's Committee on Grading Lesions of the Council on Arteriosclerosis has devised a method of grading the severity of atherosclerosis in human coronary arteries and aortas. The method uses two series of color photographs of arteries arranged in increasing severity of atherosclerosis. The Committee tested the method for inter-observer reproducibility by exhibiting the ...