Introduction: Chest trauma has a high incidence and pneumothorax is the most frequent finding. The literature is scarce on what to do with asymptomatic patients with pneumothorax due to penetrating chest trauma. The aim of this study was to evaluate what are the findings of the control radiography of patients with penetrating chest trauma who are not initially taken to surgery, and their usefulness in determining the need for further treatment. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was performed, including patients older than 15 years who were admitted for penetrating chest trauma between January 2015 and December 2017 and who did not require initial surgical management. We analyzed the results of chest radiography, the time of its acquisition, and the behavior decided according to the findings in patients initially left under observation. Results: A total of 1,554 patients were included, whose average age was 30 years, 92.5% were male and 97% had a sharp weapon wound. Of these, 186 (51.5%) had no alterations in their initial X-ray, 142 had pneumothorax less than 30% and 33 had pneumothorax greater than 30 %, hemopneumothorax or hemothorax. Closed thoracostomy was required as the final procedure in 78 cases, sternotomy or thoracotomy in 2 cases and discharged in 281. Conclusion: In asymptomatic patients with small or moderate pneumothorax and no other significant lesions, longer observation times, radiographs and closed thoracostomy may be unnecessary.

Background: Through the development of robust techniques and their comprehensive validation, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) has developed a wide range of indications in its almost 25 years of clinical use. The recording of cardiac volumes and systolic ventricular function as well as the characterization of focal myocardial scars are now part of standard CMR imaging. Recently, the introduction of accelerated image acquisition technologies, the new imaging methods of myocardial T1 and T2 mapping and 4-D flow measurements, and the new post-processing technique of myocardial feature tracking have gained relevance. Method: This overview is based on a comprehensive literature search in the PubMed database on new CMR techniques and their clinical application. Results and conclusion: This article provides an overview of the latest technical developments in the field of CMR and their possible applications based on the most important clinical questions.

Problem: in recent years, new studies have been published on biological effects of strong static magnetic fields and on thermal effects of high-frequency electromagnetic fields as used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Many of these studies have not yet been incorporated into current safety recommendations. Method: scientific publications from 2010 onwards on the biological effects of static and electromagnetic fields of MRI were searched and evaluated. Results: new studies confirm older work that has already described effects of static magnetic fields on sensory organs and the central nervous system accompanied by sensory perception. A new result is the direct effect of Lorentz forces on ionic currents in the semicircular canals of the vestibular organ. Recent studies on thermal effects of radiofrequency fields focused on the development of anatomically realistic body models and more accurate simulation of exposure scenarios. Recommendation for practice: strong static magnetic fields can cause unpleasant perceptions, especially dizziness. In addition, they can impair the performance of the medical personnel and thus potentially endanger patient safety. As a precaution, medical personnel should move slowly in the field gradient. High-frequency electromagnetic fields cause tissues and organs to heat up in patients. This must be taken into account in particular for patients with impaired thermoregulation as well as for pregnant women and newborns; exposure in these cases must be kept as low as possible.

In the process of X-ray transmission imaging, the mutual occlusion between structures will lead to the image information overlap, and the computed tomography (CT) method is often required to obtain the structure information at different depths, but with low efficiency. To address these problems, an X-ray focused on imaging algorithm based on multi-line scanning is proposed, which only requires the scene target to pass through the detection area along a straight line to extract multi-view information, and uses the optical field reconstruction theory to achieve the de-obscured reconstruction of the structure at a specified depth with high real-time. The results of multi-line scan and X-ray reconstruction of the target show that the proposed method can reconstruct the information of any specified depth layer, and it can perform fast imaging detection of the mutually occluded target structures and improve the recognition of the occluded targets, which has a good application prospect.

In recent years, ghost imaging has made important progress in the field of remote sensing imaging. In order to promote the application of solar ghost imaging in this field, this paper studies the computational ghost imaging based on the incoherent light of blackbody radiation. Firstly, according to the intensity probability density function of blackbody radiation, the expression of contrast-to-noise ratio (R_CN) describing the quality of computational ghost imaging is obtained, and then the random speckle pattern simulating blackbody radiation is generated by computer with the idea of slice sampling, finally, a digital light projector is used to modulate and generate the random modulated light that simulates the blackbody radiation light source, and this light source is used to realize the computational ghost image of the reflective object in the experiment. The “ghost image” of the object under different measurement frame numbers is reconstructed, and the contrast-to-noise ratio describing the imaging quality is measured. The results show that the image quality is relatively good when the average intensity (gray) of the randomly modulated speckle is about 160. On the other hand, the contrast-to-noise ratio of the image gradually increases from 0.8795 to 1.241, 1.516, 1.755, 2.100 and 2.371 as the number of measurement frames increases from 2,000 to 4,000, 6,000, 8,000, 12,000 and 20,000, respectively. The experimental results are basically consistent with the theoretical analysis. The results are of great significance for the application of ghost imaging with incoherent light, such as sunlight, which is approximately regarded as blackbody radiation, in the field of remote imaging.

In Costa Rica, there is no explicit recommendation from the competent authorities for the use of a specific phantom, so experts must explore what suppliers offer, among which the Normi Mam Digital phantom from PTW stands out. This article presents the results of the dosimetry and image quality control applied to the Normi Mam Digital phantom to validate it as equipment that complies with the recommendations of the Human Health Series No. 17. The results obtained were satisfactory, proving that the equipment complies with the tolerances recommended by international health bodies.