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There was moderate or substantial agreement for the diagnosis of small bowel ischemia between radiologists and residents. However, there was substantial agreement for the presence of closed loop obstruction.

We report the case of a 64-year-old female diagnosed with severe pulmonary hypertension due to the unilateral absence of a pulmonary artery. The four-dimensional computed tomography scan is a useful modality for revealing detailed anatomical findings for differential diagnoses and surgical decision-making. The patient had severe pulmonary hypertension with a mean pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) of 74 mmHg and was treated with triple upfront combination therapy, leading to significant improvement in pulmonary haemodynamics (to 27 mmHg in mean PAP) and functional capacity (WHO functional class, from III to II; 6-min walk distance, from 211 to 276 m).

Purpose: We evaluated the usefulness of an automatic slice-alignment method to simplify planning of cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) scans with a 3-tesla scanner.Methods: We obtained 2-dimensional (2D) axial multislice images using steady-state free precession (SSFP) sequences covering the whole heart at the end-diastole phase with electrocardiography (ECG) gating in 38 patients. We detected several anatomical feature points of the heart and calculated all planes required for cardiac imaging based on those points. We visually evaluated the acceptability of an acquired imaging plane and measured the angular differences of each view between the results obtained by this method and by a conventional manual pointing approach.Results: The average visual scores were 3.4 « 1.0 for short-axis images, 3.2 « 0.9 for 4-chamber images, 3.2 « 0.8 for 2-chamber images, and 3.3 « 0.8 for 3-chamber images; average angular differences were 5.8 « 5.1 (short axis), 7.7 « 5.7 (4-chamber), 11.5 « 6.7 (2-chamber), and 9.1 « 4.6 degrees (3-chamber). Processing time was within 1.8 s in all subjects.Conclusion: The proposed method can provide planes within the clinically acceptable range and within a short time in cardiac imaging of patients with various cardiac shapes and diseases without the need for high level operator proficiency in performing the examination and interpreting results.

Purpose We compared the maximal recognizable bronchial bifurcation order (MRBBO) in CT virtual bronchoscopy (CTVB) using ultrahigh-resolution CT (UHRCT) and different reconstruction parameters. Materials and methodsWe enrolled 38 patients undergoing noncontrast chest CT by UHRCT and reconstructed CTVB utilizing 3 different combinations of reconstruction parameters, as classified into Group A (matrix size, 512; slice thickness, 1.0 mm), Group B (matrix size, 512; slice thickness, 0.5 mm), and Group C (matrix size, 1024; slice thickness, 0.25 mm). In right S1, left S1 + 2, and both S3 and S10, two reviewers counted the number of consecutively identified bronchial bifurcations to compare MRBBO among these groups using Kruskal-Wallis test. Results In these segments, MRBBO increased from Group A to C. MRBBO was significantly higher in Group C than in both Groups A and B in all the segments except left S10 (P < 0.05 for all). In left S10, it was significantly higher in Group C than in Group A (P < 0.05) but comparable between Groups B and C (P = 0.122). Conclusions MRBBO is higher in CTVB by UHRCT utilizing 1024-matrix size and 0.25-mm thickness than parameters currently recommended for CTVB (matrix size, 512; slice thickness, 0.5-1.0 mm).