Routine diagnosis of human rotaviruses in stools

Electron microscopy, immune electron microscopy and complement fixation as methods of detecting rotavirus in the stools of young children with gastroenteritis were compared in a blind study during the winter of 1975-6. Complement fixation was the simplest to perform, was as sensitive as the other two, and allowed a quantitative measurement of viral excretion. Absorption of faecal extracts with fetal calf serum usually removed the anticomplementary activity of faecal extracts.

A new display technique for computer-processed digital scans

This article presents a new approach for presenting scintigraphic images. The technique combines the conventional plotting the contour lines and the highlighting, by means of hatching, of the concavities (or convexities) of the 'surface' representative of radioactive distribution. The search for the surface features is achieved generally by the method of normal curvatures. An example with a phantom demonstrates the utility of this representation method.