Cichoric acid is the main phenolic compound in the root and rhizome of the medicinal part, Echinacea purpurea that is known for possessing immune enhancing characteristics. In this study, we analysis the the synthesis and storage sites of phenolic compound in E. purpurea. We used fluorescent microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, cytochemical and immunocytochemical localization to observ...

It has recently been shown that bacteria and viruses can be delivered to the brain parenchyma without evoking an immune response. These experiments demonstrate that there are no cells within the brain parenchyma that can initiate a primary immune response, and that the drainage of pathogens from the brain parenchyma is distinct from that documented for soluble proteins. A persistent pathogen in...

Observations of fixed parenchyma cells using electron microscopy were carried out in an attempt to understand the morphogenetic process of blastema formation in regenerating planarians. Fixed parenchyma cells could be found throughout one-day blastemata. In the mid-blastema region where migrating regenerative cells build up a compact cell aggregate, long and slender cytoplasmic processes of the...

BACKGROUND Lung parenchyma segmentation is often performed as an important pre-processing step in the computer-aided diagnosis of lung nodules based on CT image sequences. However, existing lung parenchyma image segmentation methods cannot fully segment all lung parenchyma images and have a slow processing speed, particularly for images in the top and bottom of the lung and the images that cont...

The forces of mechanical interdependence between the airways and the parenchyma in the lung are powerful modulators of airways responsiveness. Little is known, however, about the extent to which adjacent airways affect each other's ability to narrow due to distortional forces generated within the intervening parenchyma. We developed a two-dimensional computational model of two airways embedded ...

Automated detection of masses on mammograms is challenged by the presence of dense breast parenchyma. The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of wavelet-based feature analysis in identifying spiculated and circumscribed masses in dense breast parenchyma. The method includes an edge detection step for breast border identification and employs Gaussian mixture modeling for dense pa...

Liver blood flow measurements obtained from both the liver surface and deep within the parenchyma, were correlated in an effort to assess the usefulness of laser-Doppler flowmetry for non-invasive monitoring of total liver blood flow, the probe being positioned on either the surface or within the liver parenchyma. In 23 Wistar rats and 10 biliary surgery patients, anaesthetized prior to gallbla...

Emphysematous pyelonephritis (EPN) is an acute necrotizing and suppurative infection of the kidney parenchyma. It is defined by the presence of gas within the kidney parenchyma and surrounding tissues. This rare condition is usually seen in diabetic or immunocompromised adults. In this paper, we report four cases of emphysematous pyelonephritis (including two diabetic patients) managed by broad...