Image quality and diagnostic performance of silicone-specific breast MRI

Purpose

To compare the image quality of three techniques and diagnostic performance in detecting implant rupture.

Materials and Methods

The study included 161 implants for the evaluation of image quality, composed of water-saturated short TI inversion recovery (herein called “water-sat STIR”), three-point Dixon techniques (herein called “Dixon”), and short TI inversion recovery fast spin-echo with iterative decomposition of silicone and water using least-squares approximation (herein called “STIR IDEAL”) and included 41 implants for the evaluation of diagnostic performance in detecting rupture, composed of water-sat STIR and STIR IDEAL.Six image quality categories were evaluated and three classifications were used: normal implant, possible rupture, and definite rupture.

Results

Statistically significant differences were noted for the image quality categories (p < 0.001). STIR IDEAL was superior or equal to water-sat STIR in all image quality categories except artifact effects and superior to Dixon in all categories. Water-sat STIR performed the poorest for water suppression uniformity.The sensitivity and specificity in detecting implant rupture of STIR-IDEAL were 81.8 % and 77.8 % and the difference between two techniques was not statistically significant.

Conclusion

STIR-IDEAL is a useful silicone-specific imaging technique demonstrating more robust water suppression and equivalent diagnostic accuracy for detecting implant rupture, than water-sat STIR, at the cost of longer scan time and an increase in minor motion artifacts.     

Demonstration of high Raman gain in a submicrometer-size silicon-on-insulator waveguide

We show high Raman gain in a silicon submicrometer-size planar waveguide. Using high-confinement structures and picosecond pump pulses, we show 3.1-dB net internal gain with 2.8-W peak pump power in a 7-mm-long waveguide. We also analyze experimentally and theoretically the effect of free-carrier absorption on the Raman gain.     

Networks, dynamics, and modularity

The identification of general principles relating structure to dynamics has been a major goal in the study of complex networks. We propose that the special case of linear network dynamics provides a natural framework within which a number of interesting yet tractable problems can be defined. We report the emergence of modularity and hierarchical organization in evolved networks supporting asymptotically stable linear dynamics. Numerical experiments demonstrate that linear stability benefits from the presence of a hierarchy of modules and that this architecture improves the robustness of network stability to random perturbations in network structure. This work illustrates an approach to network science which is simultaneously structural and dynamical in nature.     

Reactions of α-aminoazoles with (2<Emphasis Type="Italic">E</Emphasis>)-3-phenylacryloyl chloride

Reaction of 5-amino-3-methylpyrazole, 3-amino-, 5-amino-3-methylsulfanyl-1,2,4-triazole and 5-amino-1,2,4-triazole-3-thione with 3-phenylacryloyl-chloride under mild conditions is characterized by low selectivity and does not lead to the formation of fused heterocyclic systems but gives mixtures of products of mono- and diacylation of the nucleophilic sites in the molecules of α-aminoazoles. Endocyclic monoacyl derivatives of aminotriazoles in DMF undergo a transacylation at the exo-amino-group followed by cyclization into dihydro-1,2,4-triazolo[1,5-a]-pyrimidin-5-ones.     

Simple beam combination for stellar interferometry

In stellar interferometry, image quality improves significantly with the inclusion of more telescopes and the use of phase closure. We demonstrate, using first coherent and then partially coherent white light, a compact and efficient pairwise combination of 12 or more beams. The input beams are lined up and spread through a cylindrical lens into a comb of parallel ellipses, which interferes with a perpendicular copy of itself to form a matrix of interferograms between all pairs. The diagonal elements show interference of each beam with itself, for intensity calibration. The measured white-light visibilities were high and stable.     

Why is super-resolution so inefficient?

Many optical imaging systems have been designed to achieve spatial resolution exceeding the limit proposed by Abbe theory, namely lambda/2NA. These systems invariably use light inefficiently. We discuss the application of information theory to this problem, in an effort to find an upper limit to the theoretical efficiency of a super-resolving system, as a function of the degree to which its capabilities exceed the Abbe limit.