Unusual association of diseases/symptoms: Encephalitis with herpes simplex-2 in the cerebrospinal fluid and anti-RI (ANNA-2) antibodies: an infectious or a paraneoplastic syndrome?

We report on a 70-year-old woman with partial complex status epilepticus who was initially diagnosed with herpes simplex-2 (HSV-2) encephalitis, based on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) lymphocytic pleocytosis and HSV-2 DNA detection by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in the CSF, but without improvement on intravenous acyclovir. Anti-Ri antibodies were positive and computed tomography (CT) investigations revealed a small cell carcinoma at biopsy suggesting paraneoplastic encephalitis. The outcome was unfavourable and the autopsy showed typical features of paraneoplastic encephalitis but no evidence of viral inclusions. This case report is interesting because: (1) it is the first report of an autopsy proven paraneoplastic widespread encephalitis with anti-Ri antibodies; (2) despite a positive HSV-2 PCR in the CSF, there was no sign of herpetic infections of the nervous system; and (3) it illustrates the fact that if paraneoplastic antibodies are usually good markers of the underlying tumour, they are not always predictive of neurological deficits.

An active contour-based atlas registration model applied to automatic subthalamic nucleus targeting on MRI: method and validation.

This paper presents a new non parametric atlas registration framework, derived from the optical flow model and the active contour theory, applied to automatic subthalamic nucleus (STN) targeting in deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery. In a previous work, we demonstrated that the STN position can be predicted based on the position of surrounding visible structures, namely the lateral and third ventricles. A STN targeting process can thus be obtained by registering these structures of interest between a brain atlas and the patient image. Here we aim to improve the results of the state of the art targeting methods and at the same time to reduce the computational time. Our simultaneous segmentation and registration model shows mean STN localization errors statistically similar to the most performing registration algorithms tested so far and to the targeting expert's variability. Moreover, the computational time of our registration method is much lower, which is a worthwhile improvement from a clinical point of view.

Suomen kieli maailman kielten joukossa

Virkaanastujaisesitelmä Tampereen yliopistossa 22. toukokuuta 2002

Active Contour-Based Segmentation of Head and Neck with Adaptive Atlas Selection

This paper presents automated segmentation of structuresin the Head and Neck (H\&N) region, using an activecontour-based joint registration and segmentation model.A new atlas selection strategy is also used. Segmentationis performed based on the dense deformation fieldcomputed from the registration of selected structures inthe atlas image that have distinct boundaries, onto thepatient's image. This approach results in robustsegmentation of the structures of interest, even in thepresence of tumors, or anatomical differences between theatlas and the patient image. For each patient, an atlasimage is selected from the available atlas-database,based on the similarity metric value, computed afterperforming an affine registration between each image inthe atlas-database and the patient's image. Unlike manyof the previous approaches in the literature, thesimilarity metric is not computed over the entire imageregion; rather, it is computed only in the regions ofsoft tissue structures to be segmented. Qualitative andquantitative evaluation of the results is presented.

Suomen saamelaisperäisistä paikannimistä

Havaintoja Eeva Maria Närhen kirjoituksesta Pari harvinaista veistönimieä ja Ritva Liisa Pitkäsen Unto Salon tutkimuksen esittelystä Suomi ja Häme, Häme ja Satakunta // Virittäjä 2/2002