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Francesc Carreras, Jaume Garcia, Debora Gil, Sandra Pujadas, Chi ho Lion, R.Suarez-Arias, et al. (2012). Left ventricular torsion and longitudinal shortening: two fundamental components of myocardial mechanics assessed by tagged cine-MRI in normal subjects. IJCI - International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging, 28(2), 273–284.
Abstract: Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (Cardiac MRI) has become a gold standard diagnostic technique for the assessment of cardiac mechanics, allowing the non-invasive calculation of left ventric- ular long axis longitudinal shortening (LVLS) and absolute myocardial torsion (AMT) between basal and apical left ventricular slices, a movement directly related to the helicoidal anatomic disposition of the myocardial fibers. The aim of this study is to determine AMT and LVLS behaviour and normal values from a group of healthy subjects. A group of 21 healthy volunteers (15 males) (age: 23–55 y.o., mean:30.7 ± 7.5) were prospectively included in an obser- vational study by Cardiac MRI. Left ventricular rotation (degrees) was calculated by custom-made software (Harmonic Phase Flow) in consecutive LV short axis planes tagged cine-MRI sequences. AMT was determined from the difference between basal and apical planes LV rotations. LVLS (%) was determined from the LV longitudinal and horizontal axis cine-MRI images. All the 21 cases studied were interpretable, although in three cases the value of the LV apical rotation could not be determined. The mean rotation of the basal and apical planes at end-systole were -3.71° ± 0.84° and 6.73° ± 1.69° (n:18) respectively, resulting in a LV mean AMT of 10.48° ± 1.63° (n:18). End-systolic mean LVLS was 19.07 ± 2.71%. Cardiac MRI allows for the calculation of AMT and LVLS, fundamental functional components of the ventricular twist mechanics conditioned, in turn, by the anatomical helical layout of the myocardial fibers. These values provide complementary information about systolic ventricular function in relation to the traditional parameters used in daily practice.
Keywords: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); Tagging MRI; Cardiac mechanics; Ventricular torsion
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David Roche, Debora Gil, & Jesus Giraldo. (2013). Mechanistic analysis of the function of agonists and allosteric modulators: Reconciling two-state and operational models. BJP - British Journal of Pharmacology, 169(6), 1189–202.
Abstract: Two-state and operational models of both agonism and allosterism are compared to identify and characterize common pharmacological parameters. To account for the receptor-dependent basal response, constitutive receptor activity is considered in the operational models. By arranging two-state models as the fraction of active receptors and operational models as the fractional response relative to the maximum effect of the system, a one-by-one correspondence between parameters is found. The comparative analysis allows a better understanding of complex allosteric interactions. In particular, the inclusion of constitutive receptor activity in the operational model of allosterism allows the characterization of modulators able to lower the basal response of the system; that is, allosteric modulators with negative intrinsic efficacy. Theoretical simulations and overall goodness of fit of the models to simulated data suggest that it is feasible to apply the models to experimental data and constitute one step forward in receptor theory formalism.
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Oriol Rodriguez-Leor, A. Carol, H. Tizon, Eduard Fernandez-Nofrerias, J. Mauri, Vicente del Valle, et al. (2005). Model estadístic-determinístic per la segmentació de l adventicia en imatges d ecografía intracoronaria. Rev Societat Catalana Cardiologia, 5, 41.
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Misael Rosales, Petia Radeva, Oriol Rodriguez-Leor, & Debora Gil. (2009). Modelling of image-catheter motion for 3-D IVUS. MIA - Medical image analysis, 13(1), 91–104.
Abstract: Three-dimensional intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) allows to visualize and obtain volumetric measurements of coronary lesions through an exploration of the cross sections and longitudinal views of arteries. However, the visualization and subsequent morpho-geometric measurements in IVUS longitudinal cuts are subject to distortion caused by periodic image/vessel motion around the IVUS catheter. Usually, to overcome the image motion artifact ECG-gating and image-gated approaches are proposed, leading to slowing the pullback acquisition or disregarding part of IVUS data. In this paper, we argue that the image motion is due to 3-D vessel geometry as well as cardiac dynamics, and propose a dynamic model based on the tracking of an elliptical vessel approximation to recover the rigid transformation and align IVUS images without loosing any IVUS data. We report an extensive validation with synthetic simulated data and in vivo IVUS sequences of 30 patients achieving an average reduction of the image artifact of 97% in synthetic data and 79% in real-data. Our study shows that IVUS alignment improves longitudinal analysis of the IVUS data and is a necessary step towards accurate reconstruction and volumetric measurements of 3-D IVUS.
Keywords: Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS); Motion estimation; Motion decomposition; Fourier
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Sergio Vera, Debora Gil, Antonio Lopez, & Miguel Angel Gonzalez Ballester. (2012). Multilocal Creaseness Measure. IJ - The Insight Journal.
Abstract: This document describes the implementation using the Insight Toolkit of an algorithm for detecting creases (ridges and valleys) in N-dimensional images, based on the Local Structure Tensor of the image. In addition to the filter used to calculate the creaseness image, a filter for the computation of the structure tensor is also included in this submission.
Keywords: Ridges, Valley, Creaseness, Structure Tensor, Skeleton,
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