Dental arch definition in computed tomographs using two semi-automatic methods.

Computed tomography is a widely used image examination in dental imaging that provides an accurate location of oral structures and features, including the dental arch, which is an important anatomical feature. This study proposes two new semi-automatic methods for arch definition in CTs, with minimal user effort. This study includes 25 CT examinations. The first method is based on the teeth pulps, and the second one is based on the whole mandible. The methods use thresholding and morphological operations to obtain the arches. The evaluation process includes two different metrics DTW and IoU. For both metrics, the initial results of M1 were very low, but the average performance of M2 can be considered high. The analysis showed that changing the input improves the M1 results substantially. The promising results presented here suggest that these methods can be used as auxiliary tools for the proposed task.

Application of thermography in the diagnostic investigation of thyroid nodules.

Thyroid nodules (TN) are common in the general population, and the clinical importance of diagnosing thyroid nodules is based on excluding the possibility of thyroid cancer, which occurs in 7-15% of cases. The thyroid gland, owing to its superficial location, is easily accessible via thermography, a noninvasive method of recording body temperature that measures infrared radiation emitted by the body surface. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the temperature differences between benign and malignant TN by using thermography. We conducted a cross-sectional study where 147 TN were divided into two groups: the first group included 120 benign nodules and the other included 27 malignant nodules. All the nodules were subjected to ultrasound, fine needle aspiration biopsy, and thermography. On analyzing the thermography results, the benign nodules had a higher temperature at the beginning of the thermography evaluation, and the malignant nodules showed a higher temperature in the middle and at the end (Ft). Using the relationships, it was observed that the temperature delta (ΔT), ΔT nodule/ΔT healthy, ΔT nodule minus ΔT healthy, and nodule Ft minus Ft of the healthy region were higher in malignant nodules. The ROC curve analysis of ΔT demonstrated a cutoff point of 2.38°C, with a sensitivity of 0.963 and specificity of 0.992. Malignant nodules have higher temperatures than benign nodules on thermographic evaluation. This finding suggests that thermography can be a useful tool in the diagnosis of thyroid nodules.