This paper presents a review of imaging techniques and of their utility in system biology. During the last decade systems biology has matured into a distinct field and imaging has been increasingly ...used to enable the interplay of experimental and theoretical biology. In this review, we describe and compare the roles of microscopy, ultrasound, CT (Computed Tomography), MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), PET (Positron Emission Tomography), and molecular probes such as quantum dots and nanoshells in systems biology. As a unified application area among these different imaging techniques, examples in cancer targeting are highlighted.
The earliest events leading to atherosclerosis involve the transport of lpw density lipooprotein (LDL) cholesterol from the blood across endothelial cells that line the artery wall. Laplace’s ...equation describes the steady state diffusion profile of a tracer through the vessel wall. This gives rise to a boundary value problem with mixed Dirichlet and Robin conditions. We construct a linear system of integral equations that approximate the coefficients of the series expansion of the solution. We prove the existence of the solution to this problem analytically by using Gershgorin’s theorem on the location of the eigenvalues of the corresponding matrix. We give a uniqueness proof using Miranda’s theorem C. Miranda, P.D.E. of Elliptic Type, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1970. The analytical construction method forms the basis for a numerical calculation algorithm. We apply our results to the transport problem above, and use them to interpret experimental observations of the growth of localized tracer leakage spots with tracer circulation time.
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