We present and evaluate two corrections applicable in determining the modulation transfer function (MTF) of a charge-coupled device (CCD) by the speckle method that minimize its uncertainty: one for the low frequency region and another for the high frequency region. The correction at the low-spatial-frequency region enables attenuation of the high power-spectral-density values that arise from t...

Introduction: As the number and complexity of partially sampled dynamic imaging methods continues to increase, understanding how these methods relate and perform becomes increasingly difficult. Modulation transfer functions (MTF) have been used extensively in medical imaging in general, and X-ray imaging in particular, to evaluate the performance of imaging systems. An MTF graphically displays ...

Breast cancer is rare in male patients. Certain predisposing factors, be they genetic (e.g., BRCA2 gene mutations) or hormonal (imbalance between estrogen and androgen levels), have been implicated in male breast cancer pathophysiology. Male-to-female (MtF) transsexualism is a condition that generally involves cross-sex hormone therapy. Anti-androgens and estrogens are used to mimic the female ...

The modulation transfer function (MTF) of an idealized imaging system can be determined from the Fourier transform of the system's line-spread function (LSF). Three techniques of experimentally determining the LSF require imaging either a slit, wire, or edge. In this paper, these three techniques are modeled theoretically to determine the noise in the calculated MTFs as a function of spatial fr...

PURPOSE Transferrin (Tf) expression is enhanced by aging and inflammation in humans. We investigated the role of transferrin in glial protection. METHODS We generated transgenic mice (Tg) carrying the complete human transferrin gene on a C57Bl/6J genetic background. We studied human (hTf) and mouse (mTf) transferrin localization in Tg and wild-type (WT) C57Bl/6J mice using immunochemistry wit...

PURPOSE To compare the in vitro optical quality at different focal points of two new bifocal intraocular lenses (IOLs) and one new trifocal IOL. METHODS The AcrySof ReSTOR SV25T0 (+2.5 diopter [D] add) and the AcrySof ReSTOR SN6AD1 (+3.0 D add) with two main foci (Alcon Laboratories, Fort Worth, TX) and the AT LISA tri 839MP with three main foci (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Dublin, CA) were evaluated...

Melanotransferrin (MTf), the membrane-bound human melanoma antigen p97, binds to plasminogen and stimulates its activation, thus regulating a crucial step involved in angiogenesis. In our study, a truncated soluble form of MTf (sMTf) inhibits, in a dose-dependent manner, the in vitro tubulogenesis of human umbilical vessel endothelial cells (HUVEC) induced by media conditioned with MTf-expressi...

Phenolic antioxidants, such as tBHQ [2,5-di-(t-butyl)-1,4-hydroquinone], induce Mt1 (metallothionein 1) gene expression and accumulation of MT protein. Induction of Mt1 mRNA does not depend on protein synthesis, and correlates with oxidation-reduction functions of the antioxidants. In the present study, we analysed the biochemical pathway of the induction. Induction depends on the presence of M...

PURPOSE Iterative reconstruction (IR) technique is growingly used in clinical CT imaging due to its ability to provide improved image quality at lower patient doses. However, the nonlinear frequency response of IR technique, which may affect quantitative analysis, is rarely explored. This study evaluates noise level and contrast dependent behavior of MTF in IR CT imaging with a multi-contrast s...

We systematically determined which spectrotemporal modulations in speech are necessary for comprehension by human listeners. Speech comprehension has been shown to be robust to spectral and temporal degradations, but the specific relevance of particular degradations is arguable due to the complexity of the joint spectral and temporal information in the speech signal. We applied a novel modulati...