---

Abstract Introduction: Gd-hematoporphyrin(Gd-H) was used along with human colorectal cancer cells (HT29/219) as a contrast agent in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to measure the stability of Gd-H in mice. Materials & Methods: Human colorectal cancer cells (HT29/219) were injected in flank of 20 (four groups of five) mice. Three to four weeks after tumor implantations, when the tumor diameter was 3-5 mm, the mice were injected with Gd-H contrast agent. The animals were slaughtered at 7, 24 and 72 hours post injection, followed by removal of critical organs (liver, kidney) and the tumor. These organs were minced for MR imaging and UV-spect. Findings: The biggest of T1 relaxation times of liver and kidney were found after 24 h and 72h, respectively. The most signal intensity in liver and kidney was revealed after 24h and 72h, respectively. The most concentration of Gd in tumor occurs 24h after the injection. Conclusion: The data of T1 relaxation time, signal intensity and concentration of Gd showed that the stability of Gd-H is more than 72 hours after the injection in mice.

---

Introduction: localizing of the epileptogenic zone is a key step in the preoperative assessment of patients with medically refractory medial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE). Quantitative measurement of hippocampal volume (HV) using a standard method of manual tracing is very time consuming, difficult and operator-dependent that is why several automated hippocampal volumetric methods are used. The purpose of this study was to assess the degree of agreement between the automated hippocampal volumetric methods and measurements obtained from standard method (manually) in mTLE patients.

Materials & methods: This study was performed in10 patients with mTLE, and 10 healthy controls participated. For each case, the right and left hippocampal volumes were measured using manual tracing method and three automated hippocampal volumetric methods include FSL, FreeSurfer and atlas-based. Degree of agreement between these methods was analyzed using statistical tests of the Pearson correlation coefficient and the Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC).

Findings: The Pearson correlation coefficients of HV between the manual tracing and FreeSurfer methods were 0.80(right) and 0.88(left), between the manual tracing   and FSL methods were 0.80(right) and 0.79(left), and between the manual tracing   and atlas-based methods were 0.72(right) and 0.66(left). The ICCs of HV between the manual tracing and FreeSurfer methods were 0.80(right) and 0.87(left), between the manual tracing and FSL methods were 0.77(right) and 0.78(left), and between the manual tracing and atlas-based methods were 0.70(right) and 0.66(left).

Discussion & Conclusion: Findings of this study showed that automated methods could be valuable tools for the evaluation of epileptic patients and preoperative assessment.

---

Introduction: The pathological changes associated with multiple sclerosis (MS) produce changes in uniformity of the neural networks of brain white matter that result in more perceptible changes on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Increase in mean diffusivity (MD) and reduction in fractional anisotropy (FA) on DTI seen in MS patients may be due to the degradation of membrane or other cell structures. The aim of this study was to investigate the pathological changes made in the brains of MS patients using the DTI technique.
 Materials & methods: This study was performed on 15 patients with multiple sclerosis. To investigate the location of plaques and normal appearing white matter (NAWM) some routine protocols for the brain, including T2-FLAIR and T2, were taken and to normalize the images of DTI, the T1 MPRAGE protocol was applied. After image processing using SPM, FSL, and MedINRIA software, the data were analyzed with the Mann-Whitney test.
Findings: The results showed that there is a significant difference between the mean of MD (mean=4.3±1.01) and FA (mean=0.24±0.05) values in MS plaques and the mean of MD (mean=2.1±1.1) and FA (mean=0.55±0.56) values in the normal white matter (NWM) tissue of the control group (P=0.00001). Comparing the data obtained from the NAWM tissue with expanded disability status scale (EDSS) of patients showed that patients with higher EDSS show higher MD values (P=0.004) and lower FA values than patients with lower EDSS (P=0.001).
 Discussion & Conclusion: This study showed that factors of MD and FA in DTI technique can provide valuable information as imaging biomarkers about the MS plaques.

---

Cavernous malformation is an abnormal vascular lesion caused by dysfunction in vessel wall. This disease is often asymptomatic but seizure, hemorrhage, progressive neurological deficit and headache may be seen. Cavernous malformation usually presents as individual lesions. Multiple lesions are rare and can be familial with an autosomal dominant pattern. In this study a 41-year-old woman presenting with progressive neurological deficit consisting of diplopia, vertigo and facial palsy to hospital was examined and multiple cavernous malformation lesions were found. These lesions were also present in examination of other family members.