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In this paper, a new combined approach, based on Magnetic Resonanceguided Focused Ultrasound Surgery (MRgFUS) technique and functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), was applied for treatment and monitoring of patients affected by bilateral Parkinson’s disease (PD). On one side, MRgFUS enables non-invasive thalamotomy by combining FUS for tissue ablation and MR for targeting and monitoring. On the other side, fNIRS allows to monitor, non-invasively and without strict motion restriction even in a daily life environment, cortical neural activity related dynamics of both oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin (HbO and HbR, respectively). In particular, the changes of cortical activation pattern in PD patients, with respect to age matched healthy control subjects, were analysed, while performing left and right hand finger tapping (LFT and RFT, respectively), before MRgFUS treatment, and at two different time intervals after the treatment. By comparison with the pre-treatment session, significant activations were predominantly observed one week after the treatment, with patterns recalling those of control group, and partially lost one month later, likely because of the neurodegenerative nature of PD. In addition, activations were more marked for LFT task, being the treatment performed on the right hemisphere. These results appear promising in view of the application of fNIRS for neurorehabilitation, especially in those clinical settings where traditional neuroimaging techniques cannot be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Periodic quality control (QC) procedures are important in order to guarantee the image quality of radiological equipment and are also conducted using phantoms simulating human body. Objective: To perform (QC) measurements in intraoral imaging devices, a new and simple phantom was manufactured. Besides, to simplify QC procedures, computerized LabView-based software has been devised, enabling determination of image quantitative parameters in real time or during post processing. Material and Methods: In this experimental study, the novel developed phantom consists of a Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) circular insert. It is able to perform a complete QC image program of X-ray intraoral equipment and also causes the evaluation of image uniformity, high and low contrast spatial resolution, image linearity and artefacts, with only two exposures. Results: Three raters analyzed the images using the LabView dedicated software and determined the quantitative and qualitative parameters in an innovative and accurate way. Statistical analysis evaluated the reliability of this study. Good accuracy of the quantitative and qualitative measurements for the different intraoral systems was obtained and no statistical differences were found using the inter-rater analysis. Conclusion: The achieved results and the related statistical analysis showed the validity of this methodology, which could be proposed as an alternative to the commonly adopted procedures, and suggested that the novel phantom, coupled with the LabView based software, could be considered as an effective tool to carry out a QC image program in a reproducible manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. Magnetic resonance imaging-guided focused ultrasound surgery (MRgFUS) is a non-invasive thermal ablation method that involves high-intensity focused ultrasound surgery (FUS) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging for anatomical imaging and real-time thermal mapping. This technique is widely employed for the treatment of patients affected by essential tremor (ET) and Parkinson's disease (PD). In the current study, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to highlight hemodynamics changes in cerebral cortex activity, during a simple hand motor task, i.e. unimanual left and right finger-tapping, in ET and PD patients. Approach. All patients were evaluated before, one week and one month after MRgFUS treatment. Main results. fNIRS revealed cerebral hemodynamic changes one week and one month after MRgFUS treatment, especially in the ET group, that showed a significant clinical improvement in tremor clinical scores. Significance. To our knowledge, our study is the first that showed the use of fNIRS system to measure the cortical activity changes following unilateral ventral intermediate nucleus thalamotomy after MRgFUS treatment. Our findings showed that therapeutic MRgFUS promoted the remodeling of neuronal networks and changes in cortical activity in association with symptomatic improvements., (Creative Commons Attribution license.)