Papers by Vincenzo Positano
Current Pharmaceutical Design, 2014
Cardiac health depends on the heart's ability to utilize different substrates to support ... more Cardiac health depends on the heart's ability to utilize different substrates to support overall oxidative metabolism. To characterize a variety of cardiac diseases, there is an ever-growing demand for an accurate non-invasive approach to evaluating myocardial substrate metabolism. Data obtained from quantitative metabolic imaging modalities add functional information to the anatomic imaging modalities and can aid patient management. The goal of this review is to emphasize the role of non-invasive imaging techniques (such as PET, SPECT, MR spectroscopy and spectroscopic imaging) to detect the metabolic footprints of heart disease. The advancement of models and methods to estimate kinetic parameters of dynamic processes using data acquired from cardiac imaging modalities is discussed.
ABSTRACT Radiofrequency coils in Magnetic Resonance systems are used to produce a homogeneous B1 ... more ABSTRACT Radiofrequency coils in Magnetic Resonance systems are used to produce a homogeneous B1 field for exciting the nuclei and to pick up the signals emitted by the nuclei with high signal-to-noise ratio. Accordingly, coil performance affects strongly the quality of the obtained data and images.Coil efficiency, defined as the B1 magnetic field induced at a given point on the square root of supplied power P, is an important parameter that characterizes coil performance, since by maximizing efficiency will also maximize the signal-to-noise ratio.This work describes and compares four methods for coil efficiency estimation, based on different theoretical approaches. Three methods allow efficiency measurement by using “probe techniques” (perturbing loop, perturbing sphere and pick-up coil), which can be used both on the bench and inside the scanner, while an “NMR technique” has been employed for comparison purpose.Methods were tested on a 13C birdcage coil tuned at 32.13 MHz.
ABSTRACT Radiofrequency coils in magnetic resonance systems are used to irradiate nuclear spins a... more ABSTRACT Radiofrequency coils in magnetic resonance systems are used to irradiate nuclear spins and to pick up the signals emitted by the nuclei with high signal-to-noise ratio and large sensitivity region. The quality of the obtained images strongly depends upon the coil performance. When used at low frequencies, a number of drawbacks arise that drastically reduce their overall performances. In this work, we describe and verify the accuracy of a coil sensitivity estimation method based on the perturbing sphere theory which permits characterization of coil performance in a short time and that can be useful for periodical coil quality controls. In particular, we describe the application of the method by testing two 13C birdcage coils tuned at 32.13 MHz and verifying its accuracy using theoretical and experimental approaches.
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Papers by Vincenzo Positano