The impact of hepatic pressurization on liver shear wave speed estimates in constrained versus unconstrained conditions.

Increased hepatic venous pressure can be observed in patients with advanced liver disease and congestive heart failure. This elevated portal pressure also leads to variation in acoustic radiation-force-derived shear wave-based liver stiffness estimates. These changes in stiffness metrics with hepatic interstitial pressure may confound stiffness-based predictions of liver fibrosis stage. The underlying mechanism for this observed stiffening behavior with pressurization is not well understood and is not explained with commonly used linear elastic mechanical models. An experiment was designed to determine whether the stiffness increase exhibited with hepatic pressurization results from a strain-dependent hyperelastic behavior. Six excised canine livers were subjected to variations in interstitial pressure through cannulation of the portal vein and closure of the hepatic artery and hepatic vein under constrained conditions (in which the liver was not free to expand) and unconstrained conditions. Radiation-force-derived shear wave speed estimates were obtained and correlated with pressure. Estimates of hepatic shear stiffness increased with changes in interstitial pressure over a physiologically relevant range of pressures (0-35 mmHg) from 1.5 to 3.5 m s(-1). These increases were observed only under conditions in which the liver was free to expand while pressurized. This behavior is consistent with hyperelastic nonlinear material models that could be used in the future to explore methods for estimating hepatic interstitial pressure noninvasively.

Continuous and transient vesicle cycling at a ribbon synapse.

Optical methods were used to study the Ca2+ dependence of vesicle cycling in bipolar cells isolated from goldfish retinas. Uniformly raising the Ca2+ concentration to between 0.8 and 20 microM produced a continuous vesicle cycle of balanced exocytosis and endocytosis with a maximum rate equivalent to the turnover of the entire surface membrane of a terminal every 2 min (or approximately 900 vesicles sec-1). Increasing the Ca2+ concentration above 20 microM inhibited continuous vesicle cycling. In contrast, influx of Ca2+ through voltage-gated channels produced a transient burst of exocytosis that increased the surface area of a terminal by a maximum of 12% (equivalent to the addition of 13,000 vesicles). Endocytosis was delayed until after Ca2+ influx stopped and the average Ca2+ concentration in the terminal declined. Hence, a single terminal has mechanisms for both continuous and transient vesicle cycling.

Comparison of methods for determining the second-order detection efficiency of a VUV spectrometer.

Four independent procedures were developed and tested to measure the apparatus response function of a VUV spectrometer-detector system for unpolarized 46-nm radiation dispersed in second order. These measurements were made to allow the use of continuum synchrotron radiation for the calibration of the response of the spectrometer-detector system for dispersion of 92-nm radiation in first order with full correction for the effects of synchrotron radiation dispersed in second order. In the first method, synchrotron radiation was used in combination with a thin Al foil to block out synchrotron radiation at 92 nm while allowing 46-nm radiation to enter the spectrometer. In the second as well as the third method NeII 46-nm line radiation was used to measure the response function in first and second order. The line radiation was produced by (1) an electron beam exciting a Ne gas target for which the resulting VUV light illuminated the entire grating and (2) a duoplasmatron VUV light source operating with Ne gas producing a small spot of radiation that was scanned across the surface of the spectrometer grating. In the fourth method the difference in the spectral distributions of synchrotron radiation produced by electrons with different kinetic energies was employed to deduce the second-order detection efficiency. The ratio of the second- to firstorder response function for 46-nm radiation could be determined to a precision of 6% using the bandpass filter and electron-beam methods, 10% using the duoplasmatron method, and 250% using the multiple electron energy method.