Purpose: Pulmonary emphysema may associate with ischemic heart disease through systemic microvascular abnormality as a common pathway. Stress cardiovascular MR (CMR) allows for the assessment of global coronary flow reserve (CFR). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between the emphysema severity and the multiple MRI parameters in the emphysema patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD).

Methods: A total of 210 patients with known or suspected CAD who underwent both 3.0T CMR including cine CMR, stress and rest perfusion CMR, stress and rest phase-contrast (PC) cine CMR of coronary sinus, and late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) CMR, and lung CT within 6 months were studied. Global CFR, volumes and functions of both ventricles and atria, and presence or absence of myocardial ischemia and infarction were evaluated. Emphysema severity was visually determined on lung CT by Goddard method.

Result: Seventy nine (71.0 ± 7.9 years, 75 male) of 210 patients with known or suspected CAD had emphysema on lung CT. Goddard score was significantly correlated with CFR (r = –0.246, P = 0.029), left ventricular end-diastolic volume index (LV EDVI) (r = –0.230, P = 0.041), right ventricular systolic volume index (RV SVI) (r = –0.280, P = 0.012), left atrial (LA) total emptying volume index (r = –0.269, P = 0.017), LA passive emptying volume index (r = –0.309, P = 0.006), LA systolic strain (Es) (r = –0.244, P = 0.030), and LA conduit strain (Ee) (r = –0.285, P = 0.011) in the patients with emphysema. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed LA conduit function was independently associated with emphysema severity as determined by Goddard method (beta = –0.361, P = 0.006).

Conclusion: LA conduit function independently associates with emphysema severity in the emphysema patients with known or suspected CAD after adjusting age, sex, smoking, and the CMR indexes including CFR. These findings suggest that impairment of LA function predominantly occurs prior to the reduction of the CFR in the emphysema patients with known or suspected CAD.

Background:Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is an important cause of heart failure and cardiac transplantation. This study determined the prevalence of DCM-associated genes and evaluated the genotype-phenotype correlation in Vietnamese patients.

Methods and Results:This study analyzed 58 genes from 230 patients. The study cohort consisted of 64.3% men; age at diagnosis 47.9±13.7 years; familial (10.9%) and sporadic DCM (82.2%). The diagnostic yield was 23.5%, 44.0% in familial and 19.6% in sporadic DCM.TTNtruncating variants (TTNtv) were predominant (46.4%), followed byTPM1,DSP,LMNA,MYBPC3,MYH6,MYH7,DES,TNNT2,ACTC1,ACTN2,BAG3,DMD,FKTN,PLN,TBX5,RBM20,TCAP(2–6%). Familial DCM, genotype-positive andTTNtv-positive patients were younger than those with genotype-negative and sporadic DCM. Genotype-positive patients displayed a decreased systolic blood pressure and left ventricular wall thickness compared to genotype-negative patients. Genotype-positive patients, particularly those withTTNtv, had a family history of DCM, higher left atrial volume index and body mass index, and lower right ventricle-fractional area change than genotype-negative patients. Genotype-positive patients reached the combined outcomes more frequently and at a younger age than genotype-negative patients. Major cardiac events occurred more frequently in patients positive with genes other thanTTNtv.

Conclusions:The study findings provided an overview of Vietnamese DCM patients’ genetic profile and suggested that management of environmental factors may be beneficial for DCM patients.

Many people can distinguish whether the meat is grilled or not by the color of the meat. People with dichromacy, however, are hard to do this. Such characteristic in which the color seen by a human looks different is called color vision diversity. In this paper, we propose a smartphone application for color vision diversity in which we can easily judge the degree of grilled meat. This application obtains the image of the meat by a camera of the smartphone, and modifies the color of the raw meat. We investigated five methods of the modification. We conducted experiments to evaluate the application. We presented 90 images of grilled or raw meat to 37 subjects by changing the modification method. Each subject answered the meat presented is grilled or not. As a result of the experiments, the method adding blue color to the raw meat and changing raw meat to the yellow-blue lattice pattern are effective to reduce the misjudgement that raw meat is roasted.