106 results about "Blood pool" patented technology

The present invention relates generally to a device and method for preventing the undesired passage of emboli from a venous blood pool to an arterial blood pool. The invention relates especially to a device and method for treating certain cardiac defects, especially patent foramen ovales and other septal defects, through the use of an embolic filtering device capable of instantaneously deterring the passage of emboli from the moment of implantation. The device consists of a frame, and a braided mesh of sufficient dimensions to prevent passage of emboli through the mesh. The device is preferably composed of shape memory allow, such as Nitinol, which conforms to the shape and dimension of the defect to be treated.

The invention provides reagents and methods for their use in in vivo diagnosis of atherosclerosis. In particular, the invention provides monoclonal antibodies which bind oxidation specific epitopes in atherosclerotic plaque lesions, such as those which occur in oxidized LDL, in vivo with high binding specificity; i.e., at about 10 to 20 times the rate of binding of the antibodies to adjacent normal arterial tissue. When detectably labeled and administered according to the invention, the antibodies are clearly imaged when bound to atherosclerotic plaque using known imaging techniques and devices, such as a gamma camera. In addition, the invention provides a method for substantially reducing interference from background signal in the blood pool into which such agents are introduced for detection and quantification of atherosclerotic plaque burden in the cardiovascular tissue of a host.

The invention belongs to the technical field of medical image processing, and discloses a DCM myocardial diagnosis and treatment radiation image segmentation method based on a multi-scale characteristic pyramid, which is used for segmenting a cardiac MRI image and completely segmenting medical anatomical structures such as myocardium and a blood pool. According to the method, traditional convolution is replaced by convolution with holes, so that the method has the advantages that the receptive field of the convolution kernel is larger, and larger context information can be obtained; By using spatial pyramid pooling, information extraction can be carried out on the image on different scales to cope with multi-scale characteristics of the image, and even a very small object can be effectively captured; Detail information can be recovered by using an encoder structure and a decoder structure, shallow features and high-level features are fused, and a segmentation mask with rich semantics and complete details is obtained; According to the method, the workload of doctors is reduced, and the method has great significance for disease analysis and subsequent treatment plans and postoperative evaluation.

A method for cardiac segmentation in magnetic resonance (MR) cine data, includes providing a time series of 3D cardiac MR images acquired at a plurality of phases over at least one cardiac cycle, in which each 3D image includes a plurality of 2D slices, and a heart and blood pool has been detected in each image. Gray scales of each image are analyzed to compute histograms of the blood pool and myocardium. Non-rigid registration deformation fields are calculated to register a selected image slice with corresponding slices in each phase. Endocardium and epicardium gradients are calculated for one phase of the selected image slice. Contours for the endocardium and epicardium are computed from the gradients in the one phase, and the endocardium and epicardium contours are recovered in all phases of the selected image slice. The recovered endocardium and epicardium contours segment the heart in the selected image slice.

A method and system for measuring the volume of the left ventricle (LV) in a 3D medical image, such as a CT, volume is disclosed. Heart chambers are segmented in the CT volume, including at least the LV endocardium and the LV epicardium. An optimal threshold value is automatically determined based on voxel intensities within the LV endocardium and voxel intensities between the LV endocardium and the LV epicardium. Voxels within the LV endocardium are labeled as blood pool voxels or papillary muscle voxels based on the optimal threshold value. The LV volume can be measured excluding the papillary muscles based on the number of blood pool voxels, and the LV volume can be measured including the papillary muscles based on the total number of voxels within the LV endocardium.

The present invention includes PG polymer complexes with paramagnetic materials, such as Gd, Mn and iron oxide. The complexes may also include chelating agents which may be covalently attached to the PG polymer backbone through linkers. PEG may also be attached to the PG polymer backbone. The complexes may include targeting molecules. The complexes are useful as MRI contrast agents, particularly as blood pool agents.

The technology herein provides a dark blood delayed enhancement technique that improves the visualization of subendocardial infarcts that may otherwise be disguised by the bright blood pool. The timed combination of a slice-selective and a non-selective preparation improves the infarct/blood contrast by decoupling their relaxation curves thereby nulling both the blood and the non-infarcted myocardium. This causes the infarct to be imaged bright and the blood and non-infarct to both be imaged dark. The slice-selective preparation occurs early enough in the cardiac cycle so that fresh blood can enter the imaged slice.

A method, system, and apparatus of determining optimal viewing planes for cardiac image acquisition, wherein the method includes acquiring a set of sagittal, axial, and coronal images of a heart, where the axial and coronal images intersect with the sagittal image orthogonally, and where the heart has a natural axis and a left ventricle (“LV”) with a bloodpool, a bloodpool border, and an apex. The method also includes making a map of the bloodpool border, and using the map to create a full coordinate frame oriented along the natural axis.

The microwave hemorrhagic stroke detector includes a low power pulsed microwave transmitter with a broad-band antenna for producing a directional beam of microwaves, an index of refraction matching cap placed over the patients head, and an array of broad-band microwave receivers with collection antennae. The system of microwave transmitter and receivers are scanned around, and can also be positioned up and down the axis of the patients head. The microwave hemorrhagic stroke detector is a completely non-invasive device designed to detect and localize blood pooling and clots or to measure blood flow within the head or body. The device is based on low power pulsed microwave technology combined with specialized antennas and tomographic methods. The system can be used for rapid, non-invasive detection of blood pooling such as occurs with hemorrhagic stoke in human or animal patients as well as for the detection of hemorrhage within a patient's body.

A system and method for providing a dark-blood technique for contrast-enhanced cardiac magnetic resonance, improving visualization of subendocardial infarcts or perfusion abnormalities that may otherwise be difficult to distinguish from the bright blood pool. In one technique the dark-blood preparation is performed using a driven-equilibrium fourier transform (DEFT) preparation with motion sensitizing gradients which attenuate the signal in the ventricular cavities related to incoherent phase losses resulting from non-steady flow within the heart. This dark-blood preparation preserves the underlying contrast characteristics of the pulse sequence causing a myocardial infarction to be bright while rendering the blood pool dark. When applied to perfusion imaging, this dark-blood preparation will help eliminate artifacts resulting from the juxtaposition of a bright ventricular cavity and relatively dark myocardium.

The invention discloses an Evans blue complex as well as a preparation method and application thereof. The Evans blue complex structurally contains macrocylic polymine chelation groups NOTA. A marker complex is obtained after marking by using radionuclides (Fluorine-18, copper-64, gallium-68 and the like). The marker complex is prepared by using a wet process or a lyophilisation method. The invention further relates an application of the complex as a developer in organs or tissues of human or animals, and especially a blood pool developer. The Evans blue complex has the advantages of low cost and higher target-to-nontarget ratio, and is simple to prepare.

A medical device utilizing temperature sensing to identify or assess anatomical bodies or structures includes an elongate tubular member, at least one electrode, a thermal sensor, and a temperature response assessment system or component. The at least one electrode may be connected to the distal portion of the elongate tubular member, and the one or more electrode can be configured to provide energy or heat to a portion of an anatomical body or structure. The thermal sensor may be configured to measure the thermal response of the portion of an anatomical body or structure, e.g., tissue or blood pools. The temperature response assessment system or component can be coupled to the thermal sensor. In embodiments, the device may include a lumen and port opening, which may accommodate a tool, such as a needle. Methods for using temperature sensing to identify an anatomical body or structure are also disclosed.

^99mTc-labeled triphenylphosphonium contrasting agents that target the mitochondria and are useful for early detection of breast tumors using scintimammographic imaging. ^99mTc-Mito₁₀-MAG3 possesses advantageous radiopharmaceutical properties. The uptake in the myocardium is reduced by one to two orders of magnitude compared to ^99mTc-MIBI. ^99mTc-Mito₁₀-MAG3 exhibits fast blood clearance, with a blood half-life of less than 2 minutes in rats. A diminished myocardial uptake combined with a prompt reduction of cardiovascular blood pool signal to facilitate improved signal-to-background ratios.

It is intended to provide an apparatus for separating and storing blood components which facilitates the preparation of serum. An apparatus (1) for separating and storing blood components which comprises a blood pooling part (2) for pooling a fluid at least containing liquid components containing a blood-origin coagulation factors and platelets, a component storing part (3) for storing at least a part of the components of the fluid pooled in the blood pooling part (2), and a connector part (4) aseptically connecting the blood pooling part (2) to the component storing part (3), wherein the blood pooling part (2) comprises a blood pooling container (21) in the form of a flexible tube, a fluid inlet channel (27) for introducing the fluid into the blood pooling container (21) and a component outlet channel (28) for leading out at least a part of the components of the fluid; the component storing part (3) has a component inlet channel (37) for introducing at least a part of the components of the fluid having been led out form the blood pooling container (21); and the connector part (4) connects the component outlet channel (28) to the component inlet channel (37).

An exemplary embodiment of the present invention includes a method of detecting a left ventricle blood pool. The method includes: localizing a region of interest (ROI) in a three-dimensional temporal (3D+T) image based on motion information of each slice of the 3D image over time, thresholding the ROI to determine pixels of the ROI that correspond to blood, extracting connected components from the determined pixels, clustering the extracted connected components into groups based on criteria that are indicative of a blood pool of a left ventricle, and selecting one of the groups as the left ventricle blood pool.

Abstract of Disclosure A method and apparatus are disclosed for achieving suppression of blood pool signal to detect myocardial infarction using MR technology. An RF pulse sequence is applied that includes a notched inversion RF pulse designed to suppress blood pool in and around a region-of-interest. MR data is then acquired within the region-of-interest that not only has signals from normal myocardial tissue suppressed, but also has blood pool signal suppression to improve delineation of infarcted myocardium from the ventricular blood pool and normal myocardium.