The relevance of MRI blood-sensitive sequences in the diagnostic assessment of late-onset epilepsy.

OBJECTIVE: Sporadic cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is a degenerative brain small vessel disease of ageing resulting from progressive amyloid deposition in small arteries and arterioles of the cortex and leptomeninges. CAA may be diagnosed by the mean of Boston criteria, particularly with the use of the blood-sensitive T2* MRI sequences (GRE and SWI). Epileptic seizures have rarely been reported in CAA. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We describe two patients with late-onset unprovoked seizures due to CAA. A short literature review on this topic is presented. RESULTS: In our two patients with late-onset unprovoked seizures as the first manifestation of CAA, only GRE and SWI sequences lead to a correct diagnosis. In literature, only 15 patients with CAA presenting with seizures have been reported. In these subjects, data on seizures semiology and prognosis are scarce. CONCLUSIONS: Our report highlights the importance to perform blood-sensitive sequences in all subjects with LOE of otherwise unknown etiology, not to miss a diagnosis of CAA.

Experimental techniques in making multicolor white light reconstructed holograms.

Because of the characteristics of the available white light sources, lasers and photographic emulsions, as well as the environmental condition of a laboratory, many practical problems are often encountered in making high quality multicolor holograms reconstructed in white light. The nature of the difficulties is discussed. Techniques useful to the solutions of these problems are presented, such as increasing the coherence length of a laser with little sacrifice in power, improving the signal-to-noise ratio in the reconstruction, controlling the shrinkage of the emulsion to eliminate color shift, and increasing the speed of Kodak 649F emulsion.