Biomedical subjects

Silvia Olt

Publications and source records attributed to Silvia Olt.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Contrast-enhanced dental MRI for visualization of the teeth and jaw.

A technique for contrast-enhanced dental MRI is described that enables 3D visualization of the oral cavity, including the jaw and teeth. Since teeth are MR-invisible, the basic principle of this technique is that the teeth and jaw can be observed indirectly through contrast with a surrounding MR-visible medium. For this purpose, the oral cavity is filled with a nontoxic substance, such as water or MR contrast media, that gives a high MR signal. A 3D data set covering the entire buccal space is acquired, and the image intensities are inverted. Since isosurface reconstructions of the teeth and jaw, as well as panoramic views analogous to orthopantomography, can be extracted from these data, contrast-enhanced dental MRI may be useful as a flexible tool for dentistry and orthodontics. Moreover, contrast-enhanced dental MRI works without radiation exposure, and therefore it is an interesting alternative to X-ray-based imaging modalities such as conventional radiography and dental CT. In this article, some preliminary results obtained with contrast-enhanced dental MRI are shown in order to demonstrate the feasibility and performance of this new approach.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Flow encoded NMR spectroscopy for quantification of metabolite flow in intact plants.

An NMR flow quantification technique applicable to metabolite flow in plants is presented. It combines flow sensitive magnetization preparation with slice selective spectroscopy. Flow encoded NMR spectroscopy is described to quantify, for the first time, flow velocities of metabolites in plants non-invasively. Flow sensitivity is introduced by magnetization preparation based on a stimulated echo experiment, prior to slice selective spectroscopy. For flow quantification eight different flow-weighted spectra are collected. With this flow preparation very slow flow velocities down to 0.1mm/s can be detected and small amounts of flowing metabolites can be observed despite the large background signal of stationary and flowing water. Important sequence optimization steps include appropriate choice of experimental parameters used for flow encoding as well as complete balancing of eddy currents from the flow encoding gradients. The method was validated in phantom experiments and applied in vivo. Examples of quantitative flow measurements of water and metabolites in phantoms and plants are provided to demonstrate the reliability and the performance of flow encoded spectroscopy.

Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy↗

PubMed2002

Microscopic spin tagging (MiST) for flow imaging.

In this study, a new strategy for slow flow imaging is proposed. The basic idea is to generate flow contrast on a microscopic level below the spatial resolution of an imaging experiment. Since a microscopic spin tagging scheme is used, this concept is called MiST (Microscopic Spin Tagging). MiST is not a single specific measurement sequence, but rather a new flow sensitive preparation concept which is highly flexible and can be carried out in many ways. The common principle in all possible realizations of MiST is a periodic tagging of magnetization in thin planes (100-200 microm) within the imaging voxels by means of spatially selective RF-pulses. Therefore, flow sensitivity occurs via inflow of fresh spins on a microscopic scale. With this approach, short evolution times are sufficient to introduce inflow contrast and a spatial dependence of inflow times is avoided. The flow sensitive preparation and image orientation are also not connected as they are in conventional time-of-flight techniques. Another powerful feature of MiST is that it can be designed as a non-subtraction method, which results in no signal from stationary spins. Here we present a first realization of the MiST concept and its validation in quantitative flow measurements to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed preparation concept.

Arteries↗