BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE MR imaging has made it easier to distinguish among the different types of intracranial mass lesions. Nevertheless, it is sometimes impossible to base a diagnosis solely on clinical and neuroradiologic findings, and, in these cases, biopsy must be performed. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the hypothesis that proton MR spectroscopy is able to improve preoperative...

‎we consider two commutativity ratios $pr(g)$ and $f(g)$ in a finite group $g$‎ ‎and examine the properties of $g$ when these ratios are `large'‎. ‎we show that‎ ‎if $pr(g) > frac{7}{24}$‎, ‎then $g$ is metabelian and we give threshold‎ ‎results in the cases where $g$ is insoluble and $g'$ is nilpotent‎. ‎we also‎ ‎show that if $f(g) > frac{1}{2}$‎, ‎then $f(g) = frac{n+1}{2n}$‎, ‎for some‎ ‎na...

background: magnetic resonance cholangiography (mrc) has gained popularity for diagnosing primary sclerosing cholangitis (psc). we determined the accuracy of mrc compared with endoscopic retrograde cholangiography (erc) for diagnosing psc. materials and methods: this retrospective case-control study was conducted on patients referred to an outpatient gastroenterology clinic from 2001 to 2013. p...

Emergency physicians use diagnostic tests extensively, and the ability to order and interpret test results appropriately is a critical skill. An understanding of sensitivity, specificity, predictive values and likelihood ratios, as well as an awareness of the importance of pre-test probability, is essential. The purpose of this article is to explain, in a straightforward and clinically applicab...

BACKGROUND Retrospective analyses have established the role of quantitative serum free light chains (FLCs) in the diagnosis of monoclonal light chain disorders. The aims of this study were to assess (a) whether the addition of serum FLCs to serum protein electrophoresis (SPEP) identified additional patients with monoclonal gammopathies; (b) whether serum FLC measurements could replace urinalysi...

We have used a combination of stellar population synthesis and photoioniza-tion models to develop a set of ionization parameter and abundance diagnostics based only on the use of the strong optical emission lines. These models are applicable to both extragalactic H II regions and star-forming galaxies. We show that, because our techniques solve explicitly for both the ionization parameter and t...

We compared the diagnostic efficacy of the ratios LD-1/LD-2, LD-1/LD-3, LD-1/LD-4, and LD-1/LD-5 in 69 documented cases of myocardial infarction. We used 149 patients with congestive heart failure and 67 patients with nonmyocardial infarct as controls. We used a computer program to produce receiver-operating characteristic curves, decision threshold plots, and likelihood ratios for these LD rat...