Objective To analyze the diagnostic and therapeutic process of 3 cases of relapsing polychondritis(RP) and explore strategies for early diagnosis and effective therapy.Methods With retrospective study on three relapsing polychondritis patients in our hospital,we observed their major manifestations at admissions and summarized therapeutic experiences.Results All three patients had symptoms of otalgia,hoarse voice and nasal bridge pit,while their entry causes at admission were anemia,renal function failure and chest pain respectively.Only one of them was insensitive to prednisone but sensitive to methotrexate.Conclusions Because PR being easily misdiagnosed,clinical doctors should improve their caution of diagnostic criteria of RP.Prednisone is the best choice for therapy,but for those insensitive ones methotrexate is also alternative.

An original method for analyzing two-dimensional motion of coronary arteries from X-ray angiogram sequences based on active contour model (snake) is presented. The convergence result of the snake in previous frame is used as the initial guess in current frame. Centerlines of interesting vessel segments at successive time instants can be detected through snake deforming from its initial position to optimal position by minimizing the proper energy function. Measurement of intensity similarity between consecutive frames is encompassed into the energy function to obtain accurate tracking. The effectiveness of the method has been demonstrated on clinical coronary artery angiogram sequences and results are encouraging.
Coronary Angiography ; Coronary Vessels ; physiology ; Humans ; Models, Biological ; Movement

This paper presents an approach for estimating the non-rigid motion of coronary arteries using digital angiographic images. Displacement vectors of vessel points are obtained by finding points correspondences in two successive frames. Smoothness of motion field and vessel deformation measurement are considered in matching, and unmatched regions are also dealt with in the fact that the vessel after deformation may have different size with its original station. The search strategy for optimal matching is carried out using dynamic programming (DP) so that computing cost is reduced. Results of this motion estimation method applied to synthetic and clinical images have shown that the method is accurate, with a root mean square error about one pixel for simulated data. For the case of actual X-ray coronary angiographic images, visual inspection of the detected pairs of points shows that the results are very encouraging.
Angiography, Digital Subtraction ; methods ; Coronary Angiography ; methods ; Coronary Vessels ; physiology ; Humans ; Movement ; Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted

This paper presents a method for estimating three-dimensional (3D) motion of coronary arteries from single-plane X-ray angiogram sequences on two views. Firstly, original images are preprocessed and two-dimensional (2D) vessel skeletons are extracted. 2D motion estimation is performed along the skeletons in two images. Then geometrical transformation matrix between views is obtained based on perspective projection model for X-ray angiography system, and 3D coordinate of spatial points are calculated. The 3D motion estimation and reconstruction algorithm is applied along the two image sequences to accomplish 3D reconstruction of vessel skeletons and motion vectors between consecutive time instants. Its effectiveness has been demonstrated on clinical single-plane coronary artery angiograms and potential errors are discussed.
Algorithms ; Coronary Angiography ; methods ; Coronary Disease ; diagnostic imaging ; Electrocardiography ; Humans ; Imaging, Three-Dimensional ; methods ; Movement ; Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted