BACKGROUND Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) are at increased risk for tissue calcifications as a result of deranged mineral metabolism. We tested the hypothesis that valvular calcification is a marker of atherosclerosis in patients with ESRD. METHODS Echocardiography was performed in 92 patients undergoing peritoneal dialysis with no background atherosclerotic vascular complicatio...

Advanced-glycation end products (AGEs) were recently implicated in vascular calcification, through a process mediated by RAGE (receptor for AGEs). Although a correlation between AGEs levels and vascular calcification was established, there is no evidence that reducing in vivo AGEs deposition or inhibiting AGEs-RAGE signaling pathways can decrease medial calcification. We evaluated the impact of...

We investigated the spectrum of lesions characteristic of post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA) across the knee joint in response to mechanical injury. We hypothesized that alteration in knee joint stability in mice reproduces molecular and structural features of PTOA that would suggest potential therapeutic targets in humans. The right knees of eight-week old male mice from two recombinant inbr...

OBJECTIVE This study investigated the detection of thyroid nodule calcifications on ultrasound and their relationship to thyroid carcinoma. METHODS Microcalcifications (≤2 mm) and macro calcifications (>2 mm) on preoperative ultrasound examination of thyroid and lymph nodes were compared with postoperative pathological diagnoses in 4186 patients undergoing thyroid surgery. RESULTS Higher in...

A new mixed feature multistage false positive (FP) reduction method has been developed for improving the FP reduction performance. Eleven features were extracted from both spatial and morphology domains in order to describe the micro-calcification clusters (MCCs) from different perspectives. These features are grouped into three categories: gray-level description, shape description and clusters...

Vascular calcification, long thought to result from passive degeneration, involves a complex, regulated process of biomineralization resembling osteogenesis. Evidence indicates that proteins controlling bone mineralization are also involved in the regulation of vascular calcification. Artery wall cells grown in culture are induced to become osteogenic by inflammatory and atherogenic stimuli. Fu...

Otoconia are bio-crystals anchored to the macular sensory epithelium of the utricle and saccule in the inner ear for motion sensing and bodily balance. Otoconia dislocation, degeneration and ectopic calcification can have detrimental effects on balance and vertigo/dizziness, yet the mechanism underlying otoconia formation is not fully understood. In this study, we show that selected matrix comp...

Breast cancer is molecularly heterogeneous and categorized into four molecular subtypes: Luminal-A, Luminal-B, HER2-amplified and Triple-negative. In this study, we aimed to apply an ensemble decision approach to identify the ultrasound and clinical features related to the molecular subtypes. We collected ultrasound and clinical features from 1,000 breast cancer patients and performed immunohis...

Vesicles have been identified within the cartilage matrix of the upper tibial epiphyseal plate of normal mice. They were seen at all levels within the plate and usually did not appear to be in contact with cartilage cells. Vesicles were concentrated within the matrix of the longitudinal septa from the proliferative zone downward. They varied considerably in size ( approximately 300 A to approxi...