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

MRCP as compared to ERCP in patients with obstructive jaundice

Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography MRCP was performed in 300 consecutive patients with clinical diagnosis of obstructive jaundice. These patients were divided into three groups. Group one included 120 patients in whom ERCP was performed within 72 hours prior or after MRCP. Group two included 20 patients in whom ERCP was failed [12 patients] and patients refused the procedure [8 patients]. Group three included 160 patients in whom MRCP was done as the primary diagnostic modality. Ultrasonography was done in conjunction with MRCP in all groups. The results of MRCP matched that of ERCP as regards to the determination of presence or absence of obstruction and its level. ERCP has a major advantage of its ability to perform a therapeutic drainage procedure simultaneously with imaging which was not possible with MRCP