Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CAPSULAR POLYSACCHARIDE IN THE BLOOD OF PATIENTS WITH PNEUMOCOCCIC PNEUMONIA: DETECTION, INCIDENCE, PROGNOSTIC SIGNIFICANCE AND RELATION TO THERAPIES

We recently reported on the systematic examination for circulating capsular polysaccharide in the blood of 26 patients treated for pneumococcic pneumonia. 1 It is generally recognized that the presence of bacteremia increases the gravity of the prognosis of the disease. It appeared from our earlier observations that the occurrence of free polysaccharide, which is more rapidly detectable than bacteremia, makes the prognosis even graver. In this paper are reported the cases of 109 additional patients with pneumonia due to Pneumococcus type I, II, III, IV, V, VII or VIII and are presented the data on 135 patients frequently studied for the presence of polysaccharide. The patients, who had ample clinical, and usually roentgenologic, evidence of lobar pneumonia, were studied in the pneumonia service of Harlem Hospital. Before treatment was instituted samples of sputum for typing and of blood for MATERIALS AND METHODS The patients, who had ample clinical, and usually
Closed-form kinetic parameter estimation solution to the truncated data problem

In a dedicated cardiac single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) system, the detectors are focused on the heart and the background is truncated in the projections. Reconstruction using truncated data results in biased images, leading to inaccurate kinetic parameter estimates. This paper has developed a closed-form kinetic parameter estimation solution to the dynamic emission imaging problem. This solution is insensitive to the bias in the reconstructed images that is caused by the projection data truncation. This paper introduces two new ideas: (1) it includes background bias as an additional parameter to estimate, and (2) it presents a closed-form solution for compartment models. The method is based on the following two assumptions: (i) the amount of the bias is directly proportional to the truncated activities in the projection data, and (ii) the background concentration is directly proportional to the concentration in the myocardium. In other words, the method assumes that the image slice contains only the heart and the background, without other organs, that the heart is not truncated, and that the background radioactivity is directly proportional to the radioactivity in the blood pool. As long as the background activity can be modeled, the proposed method is applicable regardless of the number of compartments in the model. For simplicity, the proposed method is presented and verified using a single compartment model with computer simulations using both noiseless and noisy projections.
The Virtual Family—development of surface-based anatomical models of two adults and two children for dosimetric simulations

The objective of this study was to develop anatomically correct whole body human models of an adult male (34 years old), an adult female (26 years old) and two children (an 11-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy) for the optimized evaluation of electromagnetic exposure. These four models are referred to as the Virtual Family. They are based on high resolution magnetic resonance (MR) images of healthy volunteers. More than 80 different tissue types were distinguished during the segmentation. To improve the accuracy and the effectiveness of the segmentation, a novel semi-automated tool was used to analyze and segment the data. All tissues and organs were reconstructed as three-dimensional (3D) unstructured triangulated surface objects, yielding high precision images of individual features of the body. This greatly enhances the meshing flexibility and the accuracy with respect to thin tissue layers and small organs in comparison with the traditional voxel-based representation of anatomical models. Conformal computational techniques were also applied. The techniques and tools developed in this study can be used to more effectively develop future models and further improve the accuracy of the models for various applications. For research purposes, the four models are provided for free to the scientific community.
Prognostic significance of CD44v3 and CD44v6 in oral squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue

Background: CD44, a family of alternatively spliced transmembrane cell adhesion molecules, is expressed in many types of tumors, including oral squamous cell carcinoma. CD44 variant 3 and 6 (CD44v3 and CD44v6) expression in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma has been suggested to correlate with a poor prognosis. We investigated the relationship between CD44 variant forms and clinicopathological parameters in oral squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue (OSCCT). Methods: Immunohistochemical analysis of 60 cases of OSCCT was performed to investigate the relationship of CD44v3 and CD44v6 expression with clinicopathological parameters and clinical outcome. Results: Significant correlations were present between CD44v3 expression and clinicopathological parameters, such as mode of invasion (P<0.0001), differentiation type (P<0.0001), local recurrence (P<0.05), and secondary metastasis to lymph nodes (P<0.05). Loss of staining of CD44v3 also significantly correlated with a poor prognosis (P<0.001). On the other hand, CD44v6 expression showed no correlation with clinicopathological parameters. Conclusion: CD44v3 may be useful as a diagnostic/prognostic biomarker of OSCCT because low CD44v3 immunoreactivity is associated with high invasive potential and poor prognosis. [Oral Med Pathol 2011; 15: 107-112 doi: 10.3353/omp.15. 107]
CEANOTHUS AMERICANUS: ITS EFFECT ON THE COAGULATION TIME OF THE BLOOD

Ceanothus americanus is a shrub that grows abundantly throughout the mountain regions of the eastern part of the United States, and is found particularly in dry and barren woodlands. It is also known as Jersey tea, New Jersey tea, redshank, redroot, Walpole tea and wild snowball. HISTORY The use of preparations of this plant for the purpose of checking hemorrhage is far from being new. Almost a century ago, in 1836, Hubbard 1 reported that "a strong decoction of the bark of the root or the fresh root itself is a valuable styptic for restraining hemorrhage from wounds. " The drug in this instance was applied locally, and its action was believed to be astringent and in all probability due to the tannin present. The first mention in the literature of its administration internally for the purpose of checking hemorrhage occurred forty-three years later, in 1879, when Hammond 2 reported the
Analytic derivation of pinhole collimation sensitivity for a general source model using spherical harmonics

Pinhole collimators are widely used for single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging of small organs and animals. There has also been renewed interest in using pinhole arrays for clinical cardiac SPECT imaging to achieve high sensitivity and complete data sampling. Overall sensitivity of a pinhole array is critical in determining a system's performance. Conventionally, a point source model has been used to evaluate the sensitivity and optimize the system design. This model is simple but far from realistic. This work addresses the use of more realistic source models to assess the sensitivity performance of pinhole collimation. We have derived an analytical formula for pinhole collimation sensitivity with a general source distribution model using spherical harmonics. As special cases of this general model, we provided the pinhole sensitivity formulae for line, disk and sphere sources. These results show that the point source model is just the zeroth-order approximation of the other source models. The point source model overestimates or underestimates the sensitivity relative to the more realistic model. The sphere source model yields the same sensitivity as a point source located at the center of the sphere when attenuation is not taken into account. In the presence of attenuation, the average path length of emitted gamma rays is 3/4 of the radius of the sphere source. The calculated sensitivities based on these formulae show good agreement with separate Monte Carlo simulations in simple cases. The general and special sensitivity formulae derived here can be useful for the design and optimization of SPECT systems that utilize pinhole collimators.
SPECT detectors: the Anger Camera and beyond

The development of radiation detectors capable of delivering spatial information about gamma-ray interactions was one of the key enabling technologies for nuclear medicine imaging and, eventually, single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). The continuous sodium iodide scintillator crystal coupled to an array of photomultiplier tubes, almost universally referred to as the Anger Camera after its inventor, has long been the dominant SPECT detector system. Nevertheless, many alternative materials and configurations have been investigated over the years. Technological advances as well as the emerging importance of specialized applications, such as cardiac and preclinical imaging, have spurred innovation such that alternatives to the Anger Camera are now part of commercial imaging systems. Increased computing power has made it practical to apply advanced signal processing and estimation schemes to make better use of the information contained in the detector signals. In this review we discuss the key performance properties of SPECT detectors and survey developments in both scintillator and semiconductor detectors and their readouts with an eye toward some of the practical issues at least in part responsible for the continuing prevalence of the Anger Camera in the clinic.
On a PCA-based lung motion model

Respiration-induced organ motion is one of the major uncertainties in lung cancer radiotherapy and is crucial to be able to accurately model the lung motion. Most work so far has focused on the study of the motion of a single point (usually the tumor center of mass), and much less work has been done to model the motion of the entire lung. Inspired by the work of Zhang et al (2007 Med. Phys. 34 4772–81), we believe that the spatiotemporal relationship of the entire lung motion can be accurately modeled based on principle component analysis (PCA) and then a sparse subset of the entire lung, such as an implanted marker, can be used to drive the motion of the entire lung (including the tumor). The goal of this work is twofold. First, we aim to understand the underlying reason why PCA is effective for modeling lung motion and find the optimal number of PCA coefficients for accurate lung motion modeling. We attempt to address the above important problems both in a theoretical framework and in the context of real clinical data. Second, we propose a new method to derive the entire lung motion using a single internal marker based on the PCA model. The main results of this work are as follows. We derived an important property which reveals the implicit regularization imposed by the PCA model. We then studied the model using two mathematical respiratory phantoms and 11 clinical 4DCT scans for eight lung cancer patients. For the mathematical phantoms with cosine and an even power (2n) of cosine motion, we proved that 2 and 2n PCA coefficients and eigenvectors will completely represent the lung motion, respectively. Moreover, for the cosine phantom, we derived the equivalence conditions for the PCA motion model and the physiological 5D lung motion model (Low et al 2005 Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 63 921–9). For the clinical 4DCT data, we demonstrated the modeling power and generalization performance of the PCA model. The average 3D modeling error using PCA was within 1 mm (0.7 ± 0.1 mm). When a single artificial internal marker was used to derive the lung motion, the average 3D error was found to be within 2 mm (1.8 ± 0.3 mm) through comprehensive statistical analysis. The optimal number of PCA coefficients needs to be determined on a patient-by-patient basis and two PCA coefficients seem to be sufficient for accurate modeling of the lung motion for most patients. In conclusion, we have presented thorough theoretical analysis and clinical validation of the PCA lung motion model. The feasibility of deriving the entire lung motion using a single marker has also been demonstrated on clinical data using a simulation approach.
Optimizing deep hyperthermia treatments: are locations of patient pain complaints correlated with modelled SAR peak locations?

During deep hyperthermia treatment, patient pain complaints due to heating are common when maximizing power. Hence, there exists a good rationale to investigate whether the locations of predicted SAR peaks by hyperthermia treatment planning (HTP) are correlated with the locations of patient pain during treatment. A retrospective analysis was performed, using the treatment reports of 35 patients treated with deep hyperthermia controlled by extensive treatment planning. For various SAR indicators, the average distance from a SAR peak to a patient discomfort location was calculated, for each complaint. The investigated V0.1 closest (i.e. the part of the 0.1th SAR percentile closest to the patient complaint) performed the best, and leads to an average distance between the SAR peak and the complaint location of 3.9 cm. Other SAR indicators produced average distances that were all above 10 cm. Further, the predicted SAR peak location with V0.1 provides a 77% match with the region of complaint. The current study demonstrates that HTP is able to provide a global indication of the regions where hotspots during treatment will most likely occur. Further development of this technology is necessary in order to use HTP as a valuable toll for objective and advanced SAR steering. The latter is especially valid for applications that enable 3D SAR steering.
Azole‐resistant Aspergillus fumigatus in sawmills of Eastern France

Emergence of azole‐resistant Aspergillus fumigatus complicates management of Aspergillus diseases. Currently, selection pressure caused by azole fungicide use in farming is strongly suspected of creating resistance. As sawmills also use azole fungicides, we investigated the presence of azole‐resistant strains in this environment and studied the relationship between azole fungicide use and development of resistance.
Registration of 2D x-ray images to 3D MRI by generating pseudo-CT data

Spatial and soft tissue information provided by magnetic resonance imaging can be very valuable during image-guided procedures, where usually only real-time two-dimensional (2D) x-ray images are available. Registration of 2D x-ray images to three-dimensional (3D) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, acquired prior to the procedure, can provide optimal information to guide the procedure. However, registering x-ray images to MRI data is not a trivial task because of their fundamental difference in tissue contrast. This paper presents a technique that generates pseudo-computed tomography (CT) data from multi-spectral MRI acquisitions which is sufficiently similar to real CT data to enable registration of x-ray to MRI with comparable accuracy as registration of x-ray to CT. The method is based on a k-nearest-neighbors (kNN)-regression strategy which labels voxels of MRI data with CT Hounsfield Units. The regression method uses multi-spectral MRI intensities and intensity gradients as features to discriminate between various tissue types. The efficacy of using pseudo-CT data for registration of x-ray to MRI was tested on ex vivo animal data. 2D–3D registration experiments using CT and pseudo-CT data of multiple subjects were performed with a commonly used 2D–3D registration algorithm. On average, the median target registration error for registration of two x-ray images to MRI data was approximately 1 mm larger than for x-ray to CT registration. The authors have shown that pseudo-CT data generated from multi-spectral MRI facilitate registration of MRI to x-ray images. From the experiments it could be concluded that the accuracy achieved was comparable to that of registering x-ray images to CT data.
Hematopoietic progenitor cell mobilization using low‐dose cyclophosphamide and granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor for multiple myeloma

High‐dose chemotherapy (HDT) supported by autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) has long been one of the standards of care for younger patients with multiple myeloma (MM). Cyclophosphamide (CY) plus granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor (G‐CSF) has been the conventional preparation for hematopoietic progenitor cell (HPC) mobilization, although the optimal dosage of CY in this setting has not yet been clearly defined. This study investigated the efficacy and safety of low‐dose (LD‐)CY (1.5 g/m2) plus G‐CSF for conditioning for HPC apheresis harvest (HPC‐A) in 18 MM patients, and compared it with a regimen consisting of intermediate‐dose (ID)‐CY (4 g/m2) plus G‐CSF for 13 MM patients. Eleven patients in the former and six in the latter were treated with bortezomib (BTZ) during the induction therapy. Both regimens were comparably effective in terms of CD34+ cell yields, while adverse events, such as leukopenia, thrombocytopenia, and febrile neutropenia, occurred significantly less frequently in the LD‐CY cohort. All patients in LD‐CY cohort started and completed their apheresis on day 7 or 8, whereas for the ID‐CY cohort the day of first apheresis varied widely from day 8 to 15. These findings indicate that the LD‐CY regimen is as effective as ID‐CY for HPC mobilization, while the former is clearly more practicable and convenient than the ID‐CY regimen for patients with MM. J. Clin. Apheresis 28:368–373, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Preliminary study of the detectability of coronary plaque with PET

The evaluation of coronary plaque vulnerability could be of great diagnostic value in cardiology. Positron emission tomography (PET) is a good candidate due to its ability to quantify micromolar concentrations of targeted drugs. However, the detectability of sub-voxel targets such as coronary plaque is limited by partial volume effects and by cardiorespiratory motion. The goal of this paper is to investigate the impact of these factors in the detectability of plaque uptake. Radioactive markers were implanted on the epicardium of a pig and in vivo scans were performed. This was complemented with phantom measurements to determine the minimum detectable uptake as a function of background activity. Simulations were used to evaluate the effect of cardiorespiratory motion on the reconstructed lesions. Despite cardiorespiratory motion of up to 7 mm, the markers were detectable in the in vivo scans even after the injection of background. A lower limit of 250 Bq was found for a target to be detectable. Motion reduced the contrast of the reconstructed lesions to 23% of their static counterpart. Respiratory gating improved this to 49% of the static value. The results suggest that coronary plaque evaluation with PET is possible, provided that sufficient plaque-to-myocardium uptake contrast (50 to 100) can be achieved. This requirement increases exponentially for lesions with uptake below 250 Bq. The described experiments provide a means of estimating the minimum uptake and contrast required to ensure the detectability of plaque lesions.
Bacillus probiotics: an alternative to antibiotics for livestock production

The use of probiotics as feed supplements in animal production has increased considerably over the last decade, particularly since the ban on antibiotic growth promoters in the livestock sector. Several Bacillus sp. are attractive for use as probiotic supplements in animal feed due to their ability to produce spores. Their heat stability and ability to survive the low pH of the gastric barrier represent an advantage over other probiotic micro‐organisms. This review discusses important characteristics required for selection of Bacillus probiotic strains and summarizes the beneficial effect of Bacillus‐based feed additives on animal production. Although the mechanism of action of Bacillus probiotics has not been fully elucidated, they are effective in improving the growth, survival and health status of terrestrial and aquatic livestock. Bacillus strains also have utility in bioremediation and can reduce nitrogenous waste, thereby improving environmental conditions and water quality. Finally, recent innovative approaches for using Bacillus spores in various applications are discussed.
Comparative evaluation of the depletion‐red cell exchange program with the Spectra Optia and the isovolemic hemodilution‐red cell exchange method with the COBE Spectra in sickle cell disease patients

This study aims to compare in patients with sickle cell disease (SCD), the technical performance and packed red blood cell unit consumption between the automated depletion/Red Blood Cell exchange (RBCx) program (Spectra Optia Apheresis System) with the isovolemic hemodilution (IHD)/RBCx procedure (COBE Spectra Apheresis System) in a routine clinical setting.
Quantitative image reconstruction for dual-isotope parathyroid SPECT/CT: phantom experiments and sample patient studies

We investigated the quantitative accuracy of the model-based dual-isotope single-photon emission computed tomography (DI-SPECT) reconstructions that use Klein–Nishina expressions to estimate the scattered photon contributions to the projection data. Our objective was to examine the ability of the method to recover the absolute activities pertaining to both radiotracers: Tc-99m and I-123. We validated our method through a series of phantom experiments performed using a clinical hybrid SPECT/CT camera (Infinia Hawkeye, GE Healthcare). Different activity ratios and different attenuating media were used in these experiments to create cross-talk effects of varying severity, which can occur in clinical studies. Accurate model-based corrections for scatter and cross-talk with CT attenuation maps allowed for the recovery of the absolute activities from DI-SPECT/CT scans with errors that ranged 0–10% for both radiotracers. The unfavorable activity ratios increased the computational burden but practically did not affect the resulting accuracy. The visual analysis of parathyroid patient data demonstrated that our model-based processing improved adenoma/background contrast and enhanced localization of small or faint adenomas.