In session 3, all MR images were analyzed together. The diagnostic performance of each MR technique and each reader was evaluated by using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis; differences between postferucarbotran gadobutrol-enhanced,

ferucarbotran-enhanced, and double-contrast MR imaging were assessed at Wilcoxon signed rank testing; and interreader agreement was assessed at Cohen kappa analysis. Histopathologic confirmation or an unchanged clinical course or MR finding was the reference standard.

Results: The four readers’ detection of the benign and malignant lesions was not significantly different (P >= .11) between the three MR techniques. The benign and malignant focal liver lesions were differentiated with significantly higher confidence (P <= .01) on the double-contrast (area under ROC curve [A(z)] = 0.988) and ferucarbotran-enhanced Apoptosis Compound Library (A(z) = 0.985) MR images than on the dynamic gadobutrol-enhanced images (A(z) = 0.963). Accuracy in the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) was highest (P = .02) and confidence in the final diagnosis of HCC (P = .001) or metastasis (P = .049) was significantly higher with double-contrast imaging.

Conclusion: In select

cases, double-contrast MR imaging can improve diagnostic accuracy and increase confidence in characterizing focal liver lesions as HCC or metastasis. (C) RSNA, 2009″
“Objective: To investigate the single nucleotide polymorphism 12 (SNP12) in the estrogen receptor a (ESR1) gene in hypospadiac or cryptorchid patients from Northwestern China. Methods: 103 patients and 40 controls were analyzed for SNP12 to verify whether this selleckchem genetic variant was associated with hypospadias or cryptorchidism. Results: The frequencies of the A allele and homozygote individuals for the A allele of SNP12 in the hypospadiac group were higher than in the control group, respectively (p = 0.011, p = 0.005). The frequency of the

A allele of SNP12 in the cryptorchid group was higher than in the control group (p = 0.038). However, no significant difference Selleckchem Pitavastatin was observed between the cryptorchid group and control group of homozygote individuals for the A allele of SNP12 (p = 0.070). Conclusions: Our results suggested that the A allele of SNP12 may increase the risk of hypospadias or cryptorchidism. Copyright (C) 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel”
“This manuscript concerns the application of infrared birefringence imaging (IBI) to quantify macroscopic and microscopic internal stresses in multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) solar cell materials. We review progress to date, and advance four closely related topics. (1) We present a method to decouple macroscopic thermally-induced residual stresses and microscopic bulk defect related stresses. In contrast to previous reports, thermally-induced residual stresses in wafer-sized samples are generally found to be less than 5 MPa, while defect-related stresses can be several times larger.