Gadolinium-DTPA: a contrastagent for conventional x-ray and CT examinations; when? why and how?

It was noticed that Gadolinium-based contrast agents produced vascular and tissue enhancement on computed tomographic [CT] scans obtained in patients after magnetic resonance [MR] imaging examinations. It also have been used as an alternative to iodinated contrast agents in angiography. This study was performed to assess more systematically the potential utility of gadolinium based contrast agent at both CT and conventional X-ray procedures .Fifteen patients were examined with Gd-DTPA as a contrast medium for CT of Brain [5 patients], CT abdomen [5 patients] and another five patients underwent routine intravenous urography [IVU] examination. Single cut level dynamic scan for CT examinations performed after intravenous injection of the Gd-DTPA as a bolus technique and time enhancement curves for different tissues of interest were drown. Gd-DTPA showed satisfactory diagnostic visualization of the urinary system, good contrast visualization of the veins, and Good enhancement of the brain vascularity, but milder degrees of tissue enhancement for parenchymatous organs occurred however the aorta showed good diagnostic enhancement. We concluded that gadolinium may be an alternative CT contrast agents for patients who cannot receive iodinated contrast agents and in whom contrast-enhanced CT is the examination of choice. While the current high cost of gadolinium-based contrast agents might prohibit their routine use, the cost might be justifiable in various infrequent clinical situations, particularly for vascular studies

Normal virtual endoscopic anatomy of the upper airway

Virtual endoscopic examination is an easy, accurate and non-invasive tool for evaluation of the endoluminal airway. Normal anatomy of the generated views should be studied by heart for any radiologist who wants to enter this challenging and amazing field. Twenty patients were selected with normal airway and they were examined by helical CT with a pitch factor of 1.5 and axial overlapped cuts were obtained. The raw data were transferred via a local area network to the [Easy Vision] workstation where the virtual endoscopic views were generated. Comparison with the normal conventional endoscopic examination was done. The data obtained from the virtual endoscopic were identical to that obtained from the conventional endoscopic examination. The aim of this work is to emphasis upon the normal virtual endoscopic anatomy of the upper airway for the radiologists going to enter this interesting field for better orientation and easy picking up of the pathological lesions