Pulmonary embolism is a common cardiovascular emergency with approximately 600,000 incidents and 200,000 deaths occurring annually in the United States. CT pulmonary angiography (CTPA) has become the reference standard for pulmonary embolism diagnosis, but this technique has several issues with interpretation of the intricate branching structure...

Carotid Intima-Media Thickness (CIMT) measurement with B-mode ultrasound is a noninvasive, sensitive, and highly reproducible technique for cardiovascular risk stratification. Studies have shown that CIMT measurement is correlated with cardiac risk factors and can be used as an independent predictor of future myocardial infarction and stroke risk....

Cell culture is an indispensible tool in many fields including cell biology, immunology, microbiology, cancer and infectious disease research. However, conventional two-dimensional culture, which involves growing cells as monolayers on solid, impermeable surfaces, may lead to the loss of key phenotypic and functional cell characteristics, and often...

The hearing threshold is defined as the lowest sound levels that a listener can detect. Finding accurate hearing threshold is one of the critical parameters in hearing loss diagnosis and hearing aid. However, current methods of testing suffer from various problems. One of the main problems is accuracy. Several contributing factors of inaccuracy...

Despite advances in treatment, cancer continues to be the leading cause of death. Worldwide, cancer accounted for 7.4 million deaths in 2004; this number is projected to rise to 12 million by 2030 (WHO). A significant need continues to exist for therapeutics to decrease cancer cell viability, invasion, and metastasis. Researchers at Arizona State...

Heterogeneous immunoassays are attractive for detecting protein markers due to their high specificity and sensitivity, but the required washing steps are difficult to do on small scales. ELISA assays take time and require expensive equipment and skilled personnel. A need exists for an immunoassay that retains the high specificity and sensitivity,...

Despite recent advances in early detection and treatment, breast cancer remains a common and devastating health problem. With the advent of molecularly-targeted therapeutics, biomarkers that are associated with biological subtypes of cancer may be useful for predicting responses to therapeutic interventions. Researchers at the Biodesign Institute...

Loss of bone mineral content leads to a variety of significant medical problems such as osteoporosis. Development of new treatments for metabolic bone disease and evaluation of the effectiveness of existing therapies in individual patients are severely hampered by the lack of a reliable tool for quickly measuring changes in bone mineral balance...

Parathyroid hormone (PTH) is one of two hormones in the body primarily responsible for calcium regulation. PTH affects bone and kidney tissue. The inappropriate regulation of this hormone is associated with diseases such as primary and secondary hyperpara-thyroidism, hypoparathyroidism, hypo/hypercalcemia, and adynamic bone disease. PTH exists...

DNA profiling is now accepted as the most reliable and conclusive method for personal identification. Improved methods of DNA profiling have placed increased demand on the collection efficiency and processing of samples. Current sampling techniques typically involve using a cotton swab for sample collection. Cotton swabs have low collection efficiency...