Background: The tissue-mechanics environment plays a crucial role in human brain physiological development and the pathogenesis of different diseases, especially cancer. Assessment of alterations in brain mechanical properties during cancer progression might provide important information about possible tissue abnormalities with clinical relevance. Methods: With atomic force microscopy (AFM), the stiffness of freshly removed human brain tumor tissue was determined on various regions of the sample and compared to the stiffness of healthy human brain tissue that was removed during neurosurgery to gain access to tumor mass. An advantage of indentation measurement using AFM is the small volume of tissue required and high resolution at the single-cell level. Results: Our results showed great heterogeneity of stiffness within metastatic cancer or primary high-grade gliomas compared to healthy tissue. That effect was not clearly visible in lower-grade tumors like meningioma. Conclusion: Collected data indicate that AFM might serve as a diagnostic tool in the assessment of human brain tissue stiffness in the process of recognizing tumors.

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<b>Introduction:</b> Cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs) are one of the most common vascular malformations of the central nervous system. Symptoms of CCMs are not typical; the disease can be asymptomatic or be manifested by a wide range of neurological symptoms. <b>Purpose:</b> To evaluate chosen epidemiologic and clinical issues as well as advanced imaging diagnostics of CCMs in computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. <b>Materials and methods:</b> The study was based on retrospective analysis of CT and MRI examinations from the 5 years period. The analysis covered 61 persons, 29 males, and 32 females. The CCMs were diagnosed based on MRI examination in 43 patients and CT in 13 patients. <b>Results:</b> The rate of CCMs occurrence in own material was 0.2%. Single lesions were present in 90.2%, while multiple in 9.8% of cases. Supratentorial CCMs were observed in 77% of cases whereas subtentorial in 23%. Mean size of CCMs in the supra- and subtentorial area equaled 10.6±6.3 and 15.1±5.8 mm, respectively (p<0.05). Clinical symptoms occurred in 65.8% of patients, most frequently in patients with CCMs above 5 mm or with subtentorial lesions. All CCMs were hyperdense in CT images, with calcifications in 13.1%. In MRI, malformations showed diverse intensity of the central part with peripheral low-intensity rim of hemosiderine deposits in T2-weighted images. <b>Conclusions:</b> The clinical symptoms occur in most cases of CCMs. These patients require periodic follow-up MRI examinations, specifically those with haemorrhagic incidents or epileptic seizures, with large size or subtentorial CCMs.