A self-healing radiopaque hyaluronic acid hydrogel as a new injectable biomaterial for precision medicine in osteoarthritis.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative disease affecting cartilage, synovium and bone, that is a major cause of pain and disability. Intra-articular injection of hyaluronic acid (HA) derivatives, also known as viscosupplementation (VS), is a common treatment for the symptomatic management of knee OA. Despite its widespread use, the magnitude of the clinical benefit of VS remains controversial, with conflicting results due to methodological differences and possible differences in efficacy between products related to remanence and rheological properties.

A novel injectable radiopaque hydrogel with potent properties for multicolor CT imaging in the context of brain and cartilage regenerative therapy.

Cell therapy is promising to treat many conditions, including neurological and osteoarticular diseases. Encapsulation of cells within hydrogels facilitates cell delivery and can improve therapeutic effects. However, much work remains to be done to align treatment strategies with specific diseases.

Improved sensitivity of computed tomography towards iodine and gold nanoparticle contrast agents via iterative reconstruction methods.

Computed tomography is a widely used medical imaging technique that has high spatial and temporal resolution. Its weakness is its low sensitivity towards contrast media. Iterative reconstruction techniques (ITER) have recently become available, which provide reduced image noise compared with traditional filtered back-projection methods (FBP), which may allow the sensitivity of CT to be improved, however this effect has not been studied in detail.

Effect of computed tomography scanning parameters on gold nanoparticle and iodine contrast.

Purpose: Gold nanoparticles (gold-NPs) have lately been proposed as alternative contrast agents to iodine-based contrast agents (iodine-CA) for computed tomography (CT) angiography. The aims of this study were to confirm an appropriate environment in which to evaluate such novel contrast agents, to investigate the comparative contrast of iodine-CA versus gold-NP, and to determine optimal scanning parameters for gold-NP.

Materials And Methods: Three different clinical scanners were used to acquire CT images.