The grades of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis C are well discriminated with the B-mode ultrasound-based analysis algorithm without discrimination between grades F0 and F1. Findings on conventional ultrasound images may reflect progression of liver fibrosis even in the absence of cirrhosis.

In this paper, the effects of vibrations at high frequencies onto a freely falling two-body system in Schwarzschild spacetime are investigated. As reference motion of the same system without vibrations, a circular orbit around the central body is considered. The vibrations induce a perturbation on this motion, whose period is close to the orbital period, in agreement with the simpler situation of the Shirokov effect [1]. In general relativity, the amplitude of the perturbation is dominated by high-velocity effects, which grow linearly in the radius r of the circular orbit, while the leading term surviving the Newtonian limit decays as 1/r. Thus, even for very large radii a significant difference between Newtonian physics and general relativity is found. We give an estimate of this effect for some molecular vibrations of a system orbiting around the Earth.

No abstract

The new analysis method for a medium in which some tissues are embedded was proposed in consideration of analysis results from computer simulations. In the new method, it is possible to eliminate the influence of a cyst or veins and to detect the existence of fibers more clearly than in previous methods.

To realize a quantitative diagnosis of liver cirrhosis, we have been analyzing the characteristics of echo amplitude in B-mode images. Realizing the distinction between liver diseases such as liver cirrhosis and chronic hepatitis is required in the field of medical ultrasonics. In this study, we examine the spatial correlation, with the coefficient of correlation between the frames and the amplitude characteristics of each frame, using the volumetric data of RF echo signals from normal and diseased liver. It is found that there is a relationship between the tissue structure of liver and the spatial correlation of echo information.