Rate of vertebral bone marrow perfusion revealed a significant decrease in subjects older than 50 years. Women demonstrated a higher marrow perfusion rate than men younger than 50 years and a more marked decrease than men older than 50 years.

Purpose:To investigate blood perfusion of vertebral lesions using dynamic Gd-DTPA-enhanced MRI. Materials and Methods:Dynamic MR studies were performed for cases of acute compression fracture, chronic compression fracture, metastatic vertebral lesions with or without compression fracture. A total of 42 patients (71 vertebral segments) were included. Five types of time-intensity curves (TICs) were defined as: nearly no enhancement (type A), slow enhancement (type B), a rapid contrast wash-in followed by an equilibrium phase (type C), a rapid contrast wash-in followed by early wash-out (type D), and a rapid contrast wash-in with a second slower-rising slope (type E).Results: Metastatic vertebral lesions with or without fracture had a higher peak enhancement percentage and steeper enhancement slope than those of chronic compression fracture, but had no difference as compared to those of acute compression fracture. The type D curve had high positive predictive value for metastatic group (100%), and the type E curve had high positive predictive value for benign compression fracture (85.7%). Conclusion:Type D and E curves are valuable in the differentiation of benign and malignant vertebral lesions.

This work demonstrates a real-time visible-light phototransistor comprised of a wide-band-gap amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide ͑a-IGZO͒ thin-film transistor ͑TFT͒ and a narrow-band-gap polymeric capping layer. The capping layer and the IGZO layer form a p-n junction diode. The p-n junction absorbs visible light and consequently injects electrons into the IGZO layer, which in turn affects the body voltage as well as the threshold voltage of a-IGZO TFT. The hysteresis behavior due to the charges at IGZO back interface is also discussed.

A recently developed near-infrared fluorescence-labeled folate probe (NIR2-folate) was tested for in vivo imaging of arthritis using a lipopolysaccharide intra-articular injection model and a KRN transgenic mice serum induction mouse model. In the lipopolysaccharide injection model, the fluorescence signal intensity of NIR2-folate (n = 12) and of free NIR2 (n = 5) was compared between lipopolysaccharide-treated and control joints. The fluorescence signal intensity of the NIR2-folate probe at the inflammatory joints was found to be significantly higher than the control normal joints (up to 2.3-fold, P < 0.001). The NIR2-free dye injection group showed a persistent lower enhancement ratio than the NIR2-folate probe injection group. Excessive folic acid was also given to demonstrate a competitive effect with the NIR2-folate. In the KRN serum transfer model (n = 4), NIR2-folate was applied at different time points after serum transfer, and the inflamed joints could be detected as early as 30 hours after arthritogenic antibody transfer (1.8-fold increase in signal intensity). Fluorescence microscopy, histology, and immunohistochemistry validated the optical imaging results. We conclude that in vivo arthritis detection was feasible using a folate-targeted near-infrared fluorescence probe. This receptortargeted imaging method may facilitate improved arthritis diagnosis and early assessment of the disease progress by providing an in vivo characterization of active macrophage status in inflammatory joint diseases.