Medical revolution in Argentina.

The paper discusses the major Argentineans contributors, medical physicists and scientists, in medical imaging and the development of medical imaging in Argentina. The following are presented: history of medical imaging in Argentina: the pioneers; medical imaging and medical revolution; nuclear medicine imaging; ultrasound imaging; and mathematics, physics, and electronics in medical image research: a multidisciplinary endeavor.

Immediate and delayed two-stage post-mastectomy breast reconstruction with implants. Our experience of general surgeons.

BACKGROUND: Breast reconstruction after a mastectomy, today is considered the best choice to improve the quality of life for the patient. The aim of the procedure is to consider the aesthetic results obtained and the various involvements, comparing them with those already reported in literature. METHODS. There is no certain data of the number of breast reconstructions performed in Italy in the few years. In 1999, in Veneto, reconstruction surgery after total breast removal, represented only 16% of the operations. In our surgery Division, from 1996 to 2000, there were breast reconstructions performed, either immediately or delayed on 87 patients out of 118 after mastectomy. 73.7% none over the age of 60 (range 27-60). The breast removal technique used is the Madden, while, for the reconstruction we have put into effect the submuscle prosthetic implant; 63 patients were subject to follow-up treatment during the period of 10 to 36 months. RESULTS: Seventy-eight percent of the women have judged the final aesthetic results the same or better than expected. Based on reconstruction with prosthesis, is the preferred procedure, even with serious complications which do not always influence the final results. This preference is because of the reduced operation time and the psychological and physical benefits due to immediate restoral of the mammary volume and shape. CONCLUSIONS: Some problems (Garavaglia Law) have slowed down the diffusion in Italy of this type of treatment which is now receiving more and more request and approval by the women affected with breast cancer.

Use of a low-cost, PC-based image review workstation at a radiology department.

Despite the increasing use of diagnostic workstations, film reading is still commonplace in most radiology departments all over the world. The purpose of this work is to assess the adoption of image review workstations in a radiology department where the usual primary diagnosis is film-based and cannot be replaced with diagnostic workstations. At our institution, a tertiary care center specialized in diagnostic imaging, a pair of PC-based review workstations running a Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)-conformant public domain software for image display and analysis were installed in two reading rooms. Studies are automatically routed after acquisition from the picture archiving and communication system (PACS) server to the workstations and remain available for visualization for approximately 15 to 20 days. Data from two radiologists and two technologists collected over a 3-month period were analyzed, including purpose of use, time savings as compared to traditional manual methods, and overall user satisfaction. The results from the analysis presented in this work indicate a high degree of approval from the users, who report significant timesavings in numerous circumstances, in particular when it comes to discussing findings with referring physicians whenever films are not available. It also enriches communication between radiologists, facilitating peer review on the telephone when one of them has questions at the outcome of any given study. One of the main advantages associated with the system is the possibility of using it as a powerful tool for teaching and research. In conclusion, even when primary diagnosis is performed on film, the availability of a PACS for review can be helpful to enhance communication with referring physicians, as well as technologists and radiologists' efficiency. Our experience shows that it is possible to implement such a system using low-cost or freely available components without compromising ease of use while keeping costs down, which is a major concern in developing countries.

A study of injected dose for brain mapping on the ECAT HR+: activation maps for a parametric verbal working memory task.

The success of the 15O-water PET technique to localize statistically significant changes in regional cerebral blood flow is dependent on factors such as the activity level injected and the magnitude of the flow change. Undetectable changes may occur if insufficient activity is injected leading to high levels of statistical noise or the task performed results in only small changes in blood flow. To explore the relationship between injected activity and statistical significance, we performed a series of studies with the ECAT EXACT HR+, a high resolution PET tomograph. A parametric verbal working memory task (the N-back task) was selected to examine the relationship between regional cerebral blood flow and working memory load across a range of injected doses of 15O-water. At each activity level the volunteers were required to perform four different levels of the N-back task, a task in which a letter displayed on a monitor is matched with the letter displayed N letters previously. With increasing N, this task places increased load on working memory. For this study, 5, 10, and 15 mCi of 15O-water were injected into nine normal volunteers. The complete sequence of four tasks (N = 0, 1, 2, and 3) at three activity levels was repeated twice, for a total of 24 injections of 15O-water. We show that the peak count rate performance for the HR+ is approached at injected activity levels of 15O-water around 15 mCi. For this particular choice of N-back task, robust activation maps can nevertheless be obtained with as little as 5 mCi injected dose.