The prognostic role of 18F-FDG PET/CT-based response evaluation in children with stage 4 neuroblastoma.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the association between metabolic response on 18F-FDG PET/CT and long-term survival in children with neuroblastoma (NB). METHODS: A total of 39 consecutive children with newly diagnosed stage 4 NB undergoing both 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging at baseline and after chemotherapy were retrospectively analyzed. The associations between metabolic parameters, including SUVmax of the lesion with the most intense 18F-FDG uptake at baseline (SUVb), after chemotherapy (SUVe), and the percentage change between SUVb and SUVe, and long-term survival were evaluated. RESULTS: With a median follow-up of 56 months, 22 patients who had achieved complete resolution on PET (no residual 18F-FDG uptake higher than the surrounding backgrounds) after chemotherapy had superior 5-year overall survival (OS) (73.6% vs. 39.0%, p = 0.044). SUVb > 6.9 indicated significantly poorer 5-year event-free survival (EFS) (12.5% vs. 59.3%, p = 0.005), as did SUVe > 1.2 (18.8% vs. 41.7%, p = 0.041). Children with SUVe > 1.2 had shorter 5-year OS (33.9% vs. 75.0%, p = 0.018). Multivariate analysis identified SUVe > 1.2 as an independent predictor for both EFS [hazard ratio (HR), 3.479, 95% CI, 1.381-8.761, p = 0.008] and OS (HR, 6.948, 95% CI, 1.663-29.025, p = 0.008), while SUVb > 6.9 was a predictor for EFS (HR, 2.889, 95% CI, 1.064-7.842, p = 0.037). Among 11 children with both SUVb > 6.9 and SUVe > 1.2, all experienced disease progression or relapse within 2 years since diagnosis. CONCLUSION: 18F-FDG PET/CT could be of useful to evaluate treatment response in children with stage 4 NB. CLINICAL RELEVANCE STATEMENT: 18F-FDG PET/CT after chemotherapy exhibits prognostic significance in neuroblastoma and holds potential as an alternative imaging modality for response evaluation, especially in cases with metaiodobenzylguanidine-nonavid or persistent avid disease. KEY POINTS: The prognostic value of chemotherapy response on 18F-FDG PET/CT in advanced neuroblastoma is unknown. Higher 18F-FDG uptake after chemotherapy was associated with worse long-term event-free survival and overall survival. 18F-FDG PET/CT after chemotherapy holds prognostic significance in children with stage 4 neuroblastoma.

Kinematic target surface sensing based on improved deep optical flow tracking.

Reconstruction of moving target surfaces based on active image sensing techniques, such as phase-shifting profilometry, has attracted intensive research in recent years. The measurement error caused by object motion can be addressed successfully by tracking the object movement. However, it either requires high-cost color imaging equipment or is limited by the assumption of 2D translation movement. Therefore, this paper proposes what we believe to be a new method to reconstruct the kinematic object surfaces with any 2D movement sensed by affordable monochrome camera. An improved RAFT optical flow algorithm is proposed to track the object based on the object fringe pattern image directly. The feature points on the object are retrieved immune to the fringe pattern illumination. Then, the RANSAC algorithm and an iteration selection process are employed to select feature points with high quality optical flow. At last, the motion is described mathematically, and the dynamic object is reconstructed successfully. Experiments are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Three-dimensional genome landscape comprehensively reveals patterns of spatial gene regulation in papillary and anaplastic thyroid cancers: a study using representative cell lines for each cancer type.

BACKGROUND: Spatial chromatin structure is intricately linked with somatic aberrations, and somatic mutations of various cancer-related genes, termed co-mutations (CoMuts), occur in certain patterns during cancer initiation and progression. The functional mechanisms underlying these genetic events remain largely unclear in thyroid cancer (TC). With discrepant differentiation, papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) and anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC) differ greatly in characteristics and prognosis. We aimed to reveal the spatial gene alterations and regulations between the two TC subtypes. METHODS: We systematically investigated and compared the spatial co-mutations between ATC (8305C), PTC (BCPAP and TPC-1), and normal thyroid cells (Nthy-ori-3-1). We constructed a framework integrating whole-genome sequencing (WGS), high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C), and transcriptome sequencing, to systematically detect the associations between the somatic co-mutations of cancer-related genes, structural variations (SVs), copy number variations (CNVs), and high-order chromatin conformation. RESULTS: Spatial co-mutation hotspots were enriched around topologically associating domains (TADs) in TC. A common set of 227 boundaries were identified in both ATC and PTC, with significant overlaps between them. The spatial proximities of the co-mutated gene pairs in the two TC types were significantly greater than in the gene-level and overall backgrounds, and ATC cells had higher TAD contact frequency with CoMuts > 10 compared with PTC cells. Compared with normal thyroid cells, in ATC the number of the created novel three-dimensional chromatin structural domains increased by 10%, and the number of shifted TADs decreased by 7%. We found five TAD blocks with CoMut genes/events specific to ATC with certain mutations in genes including MAST-NSUN4, AM129B/TRUB2, COL5A1/PPP1R26, PPP1R26/GPSM1/CCDC183, and PRAC2/DLX4. For the majority of ATC and PTC cells, the HOXA10 and HIF2α signals close to the transcription start sites of CoMut genes within TADs were significantly stronger than those at the background. CNV breakpoints significantly overlapped with TAD boundaries in both TC subtypes. ATCs had more CNV losses overlapping with TAD boundaries, and noncoding SVs involved in intrachromosomal SVs, amplified inversions, and tandem duplication differed between ATC and PTC. TADs with short range were more abundant in ATC than PTC. More switches of A/B compartment types existed in ATC cells compared with PTC. Gene expression was significantly synchronized, and orchestrated by complex epigenetics and regulatory elements. CONCLUSION: Chromatin interactions and gene alterations and regulations are largely heterogeneous in TC. CNVs and complex SVs may function in the TC genome by interplaying with TADs, and are largely different between ATC and PTC. Complexity of TC genomes, which are highly organized by 3D genome-wide interactions mediating mutational and structural variations and gene activation, may have been largely underappreciated. Our comprehensive analysis may provide key evidence and targets for more customized diagnosis and treatment of TC.

An Augmented Sample Selection Framework for Prediction of Anticancer Peptides.

Anticancer peptides (ACPs) have promising prospects for cancer treatment. Traditional ACP identification experiments have the limitations of low efficiency and high cost. In recent years, data-driven deep learning techniques have shown significant potential for ACP prediction. However, data-driven prediction models rely heavily on extensive training data. Furthermore, the current publicly accessible ACP dataset is limited in size, leading to inadequate model generalization. While data augmentation effectively expands dataset size, existing techniques for augmenting ACP data often generate noisy samples, adversely affecting prediction performance. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel augmented sample selection framework for the prediction of anticancer peptides (ACPs-ASSF). First, the prediction model is trained using raw data. Then, the augmented samples generated using the data augmentation technique are fed into the trained model to compute pseudo-labels and estimate the uncertainty of the model prediction. Finally, samples with low uncertainty, high confidence, and pseudo-labels consistent with the original labels are selected and incorporated into the training set to retrain the model. The evaluation results for the ACP240 and ACP740 datasets show that ACPs-ASSF achieved accuracy improvements of up to 5.41% and 5.68%, respectively, compared to the traditional data augmentation method.

Cross-Corpus Speech Emotion Recognition Based on Multi-Task Learning and Subdomain Adaptation.

To solve the problem of feature distribution discrepancy in cross-corpus speech emotion recognition tasks, this paper proposed an emotion recognition model based on multi-task learning and subdomain adaptation, which alleviates the impact on emotion recognition. Existing methods have shortcomings in speech feature representation and cross-corpus feature distribution alignment. The proposed model uses a deep denoising auto-encoder as a shared feature extraction network for multi-task learning, and the fully connected layer and softmax layer are added before each recognition task as task-specific layers. Subsequently, the subdomain adaptation algorithm of emotion and gender features is added to the shared network to obtain the shared emotion features and gender features of the source domain and target domain, respectively. Multi-task learning effectively enhances the representation ability of features, a subdomain adaptive algorithm promotes the migrating ability of features and effectively alleviates the impact of feature distribution differences in emotional features. The average results of six cross-corpus speech emotion recognition experiments show that, compared with other models, the weighted average recall rate is increased by 1.89~10.07%, the experimental results verify the validity of the proposed model.

Preclinical and clinical study on [18F]DRKXH1: a novel ß-amyloid PET tracer for Alzheimer's disease.

BACKGROUND: The deposition of ß-amyloid (Aß) in the brain is a biomarker of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Highly sensitive Aß positron emission tomography (PET) imaging plays an essential role in diagnosing and evaluating the therapeutic effects of AD. AIM: To synthesize a new Aß tracer [18F]DRKXH1 (5-(4-(6-(2-[18]fluoroethoxy)ethoxy)imidazo[1,2-alpha]pyridin-2-yl)phenyl) and evaluate the tracer performance by biodistribution analysis, in vivo small-animal PET-CT dynamic scan, ex vivo and in vitro autoradiography, and PET in human subjects. METHODS: [18F]DRKXH1 was synthesized automatically by the GE FN module. Log D (pH 7.4) and biodistribution of [18F]DRKXH1 were investigated. Small-animal-PET was used for [18F]DRKXH1 and [18F]AV45 imaging study in AD transgenic mice (APPswe/PSEN1dE9) and age-matched normal mice. The distribution volume ratios (DVR) and standardized uptake value ratios (SUVRs) were calculated with the cerebellum as the reference region. The deposition of Aß plaques in the brain of AD transgenic mice was determined by ex vivo autoradiography and immunohistochemistry. In vitro autoradiography was performed in the postmortem brain sections of AD patients and healthy controls. Two healthy control subjects and one AD patient was subjected to in vivo PET study using [18F]DRKXH1. RESULTS: The yield of [18F]DRKXH1 was 40%, and the specific activity was 156.64 ± 11.55 GBq/µmol. [18F]DRKXH1 was mainly excreted through the liver and kidney. The small-animal PET study showed high initial brain uptake and rapid washout of [18F]DRKXH1. The concentration of [18F]DRKXH1 was detected in the cortex and hippocampus of AD transgenic mice brain. The cortex DVR of AD transgenic mice was higher than that of WT mice (P < 0.0001). Moreover, the SUVRs of AD transgenic mice were higher than those of WT mice based on the 0-60-min dynamic scanning. In vitro autoradiography showed a significant concentration of tracer in the Aß plaque-rich areas in the brain of AD transgenic mice. The DVR value of [18F]-DRKXH1 is higher than that of [18F]-AV45 (1.29 ± 0.05 vs. 1.05 ± 0.08; t = 5.33, P = 0.0003). Autoradiography of postmortem human brain sections showed [18F]DRKXH1-labeled Aß plaques in the AD brain. The AD patients had high retention in cortical regions, while healthy control subjects had uniformly low radioactivity uptake. CONCLUSIONS: [18F]DRKXH1 is an Aß tracer with high sensitivity in preclinical study and has the potential for in vivo detection of the human brain.

Multi-Stream Convolution-Recurrent Neural Networks Based on Attention Mechanism Fusion for Speech Emotion Recognition.

The quality of feature extraction plays a significant role in the performance of speech emotion recognition. In order to extract discriminative, affect-salient features from speech signals and then improve the performance of speech emotion recognition, in this paper, a multi-stream convolution-recurrent neural network based on attention mechanism (MSCRNN-A) is proposed. Firstly, a multi-stream sub-branches full convolution network (MSFCN) based on AlexNet is presented to limit the loss of emotional information. In MSFCN, sub-branches are added behind each pooling layer to retain the features of different resolutions, different features from which are fused by adding. Secondly, the MSFCN and Bi-LSTM network are combined to form a hybrid network to extract speech emotion features for the purpose of supplying the temporal structure information of emotional features. Finally, a feature fusion model based on a multi-head attention mechanism is developed to achieve the best fusion features. The proposed method uses an attention mechanism to calculate the contribution degree of different network features, and thereafter realizes the adaptive fusion of different network features by weighting different network features. Aiming to restrain the gradient divergence of the network, different network features and fusion features are connected through shortcut connection to obtain fusion features for recognition. The experimental results on three conventional SER corpora, CASIA, EMODB, and SAVEE, show that our proposed method significantly improves the network recognition performance, with a recognition rate superior to most of the existing state-of-the-art methods.

Metabolic tumor burden on baseline 18F-FDG PET/CT improves risk stratification in pediatric patients with mature B-cell lymphoma.

PURPOSE: In order to better identify patients most at risk of treatment failure and disease progression in pediatric mature B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (B-NHL), the prognostic role of metabolic tumor burden measured on baseline 18F-FDG PET/CT scan, including total metabolic tumor volume (TMTV) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG), was investigated. METHODS: Pretreatment 18F-FDG PET/CT scans from 46 consecutive pediatric patients (median age 7 years; range 2-18 years) with newly diagnosed B-NHL were retrospectively analyzed. Clinicopathological parameters and imaging characteristics, including TMTV, TLG, and bone marrow (BM) involvement detected by PET/CT were compared to predict progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). RESULTS: The median follow-up time was 31 months. Areas under the curve of TMTV and TLG to predict events were 0.820 and 0.816, respectively. The 2-year PFS and OS were 29% and 43% in 7 patients with high TLG (> 5797 g) vs. 93% and 96% in those with low TLG (P < 0.001). High TMTV (> 524 cm3) was present in ten patients and predicted a significantly inferior outcome (PFS: 50% vs. 92%, P = 0.001; OS: 60% vs. 96%, P = 0.002). In multivariate analysis, TMTV and TLG outperformed other clinicopathological factors, including serum lactate dehydrogenase and BM involvement on biopsy, and remained the most robust predictors of survival. Furthermore, TLG sub-stratified patients with distinct outcomes efficiently within high- or intermediate-risk groups, with the negative predictive value of 100% and 92% and the positive predictive value of 100% and 50% for high-risk and intermediate-risk patients, respectively. On the other hand, BM involvement identified only by PET demonstrated an inferior prognostic value in comparison with BM biopsy. CONCLUSIONS: Baseline TMTV and TLG are both strong independent prognostic factors for pediatric B-NHL and provide a potential approach to aid in risk sub-stratification, especially in patients with high-risk disease.

FDG PET/CT Evaluation of Pediatric Patients With Yolk Sac Tumor.

OBJECTIVE. The objective of our study was to evaluate the clinical utility of FDG PET/CT in staging and restaging pediatric patients with yolk sac tumor (YST). MATERIALS AND METHODS. We retrospectively reviewed the data from 31 pediatric patients with pathologically confirmed YST who underwent 34 PET/CT studies for the purpose of staging or restaging. The PET/CT studies were read by two nuclear medicine doctors in consensus. Histopathology combined with clinical and imaging follow-up was taken as the reference standard. The results of PET/CT were also compared with conventional imaging and α-fetoprotein (AFP) levels when available. RESULTS. Of the total 34 studies, six were performed for initial staging and the other 28 for posttherapy evaluation. FDG PET/CT was true-positive in all six staging studies, detected only a few more metastatic foci than conventional imaging, and changed the therapeutic regimen in none of the six patients. Nevertheless, PET/CT showed high accuracy in the restaging group, with a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 85.7%. The treatment regimen was changed in 46.4% of the patients in the restaging group according to the PET/CT study. In addition, PET/CT had higher accuracy than AFP levels in YST restaging. Overall, the per-study performance of PET/CT was a sensitivity of 100%, specificity of 85.7%, positive predictive value of 90.9%, and negative predictive value of 100%. CONCLUSION. FDG PET/CT was only slightly superior to conventional imaging in staging YST in pediatric patients. However, PET/CT of posttherapy patients with YST showed high diagnostic accuracy and had a great impact on therapeutic management.

PET/CT predicts bone marrow involvement in paediatric non-Hodgkin lymphoma and may preclude the need for bone marrow biopsy in selected patients.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the role of 18F-FDG PET/CT to detect bone marrow (BM) involvement in paediatric non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). METHODS: Pretreatment PET/CT scans from 93 consecutive paediatric patients with NHL were retrospectively reviewed. Patterns of BM FDG uptake and standardized uptake value of the fifth lumbar vertebra (SUVBM) were compared with bone marrow biopsy (BMB) for diagnosis of BM involvement. RESULTS: Of 93 patients, 41 were judged to have BM involvement. Thirty-nine were identified by PET/CT, versus 23 by BMB. Sensitivity and specificity were 95 % and 98 % for PET/CT and 56 % and 100 % for BMB, respectively. None of the patients with BM FDG uptake lower than liver had positive BMB. In 45 patients presenting homogeneously increased BM uptake, positive BMB was achieved in 93 % (14/15) of patients with FDG uptake expanding to the distal portion of extremities, compared to 7 % (2/30) of those without. A multifocal pattern was observed in 25 patients and 18 had negative BMB. SUVBM differentiated BM involvement from benign BM activation with an area under the curve of 0.885 (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: PET/CT had a high level of accuracy for detecting BM involvement in paediatric NHL. BMB might be omitted in selected patients. KEY POINTS: • PET/CT allows for accurate detection of bone marrow involvement. • Patterns of bone marrow FDG uptake are highly correlated with marrow disease. • Bone marrow biopsy could be omitted in selected paediatric patients.

Use of 18F-FDG-PET-CT for Assessment of Response to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Children With Wilms Tumor.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to evaluate the predictive value of fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography with computed tomography (F-FDG-PET-CT) in the assessment of histologic response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in children with Wilms tumors (WTs). MATERIALS AND METHODS: We prospectively registered 12 patients with WTs who were treated with 2 cycles of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and surgery. All patients underwent sequential F-FDG-PET-CT before (PET-CT1) and after (PET-CT2) neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) was measured on PET-CT1 (SUV1) and PET-CT2 (SUV2). The percentage change in SUVmax (SUVmax reduction) was calculated. After surgery the effects of neoadjuvant chemotherapy were graded histopathologically: ≥90% necrosis indicated a good response and <90% necrosis was considered a poor response. The correlation between SUVmax reduction and histologic response was estimated using the Spearman correlation coefficient. RESULTS: Among the 12 patients who underwent PET-CT before and after chemotherapy, SUVmax reduction was significantly different between the good response group and the poor response group (P=0.035). A significant, in terms of P value, correlation was found between pathologic response and SUVmax reduction (r=0.700; 95% confidence interval, 0.060-0.935; P=0.011). A threshold of 66% reduction in SUVmax was identified, with which partition, there were 8 good histologic responders (≥66% decrease in SUVmax) and 4 poor responders. The histologic complete response rate of the good responders was 87.5%, whereas that of poor responders was 0%. SUV1≥7 and SUV2≥2.4 were both considered to be with high risk of recurrence. In patients with SUV1≥7, 4/5 cases relapsed and 4/6 patients with SUV2≥2.4 relapsed. CONCLUSIONS: As there seems to be a good correlation of changes in SUVmax and histologic response, PET-CT has the potential of predicting the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in children with WT. SUV1 and SUV2 by themselves might be a good prognosticator of the clinical outcome of WT pediatric patients treated with International Society of Pediatric Oncology protocols, although the reduction rate of SUVmax is much less powerful for prognosis.

How to use BAPV to alleviate the urban heat island effect: An evolutionary game perspective.

In recent years, the phenomenon of the urban heat island caused by the rapid development of cities is very serious. To solve the problem of the urban heat island, this study proposed a PPP project consisting of the government (GOVT), photovoltaic investment company (PVIC), and residential customers (RS). Based on an evolutionary game model and combined with current policies and industry regulations in China, the evolution process and stable evolution strategies were studied. The result shows that more government subsidies, higher carbon trading prices, and feed-in tariffs will promote the development of the PPP project. For relatively suitable reference value ranges, the installation tilt angle of the BAPV system is 30°, the photovoltaic grid electricity price is 0.1096∼0.1296 $/kWh, the carbon trading is 8.92∼9.42 $/t.

Enhanced bioavailability of curcumin amorphous nanocomposite prepared by a green process using modified starch.

Curcumin (Cur), a bioactive compound extracted from plants, has attracted widespread attention due to its multiple pharmacological activities. However, the low bioavailability due to the inherent limitations in water solubility, chemical stability, and permeability poses great challenges for realizing its clinical potentials. In the current study, octenyl succinic anhydride-modified starch (OSA-S), a renewable and biodegradable biopolymer, was employed to fabricate Cur amorphous composite nanoparticles (Cur/OSA-S NPs) through a solvent-free pH-driven method with the aim to enhance Cur's bioavailability by improving its solubility and stability. Cur/OSA-S NPs, with mean sizes of about 128.9 ± 8.6 nm, encapsulation efficiencies of about 90.0 %, and the drug loading capacities around 51.0 ± 0.2 %, were successfully prepared. Cur was found to be dispersed within the composite nanoparticles in amorphous state as confirmed by the XRD and DSC characterizations. In addition, Cur/OSA-S NPs offers excellent storage, thermal and light stability, excellent re-dispersibility, and approximately 92 times better solubility than the original Cur. Furthermore, studies of dissolution and the parallel artificial membrane permeability assay (PAMPA) confirmed enhanced dissolution rates and in vitro permeabilities of Cur/OSA-S NPs. Cancer cell viability and uptake experiments revealed that Cur/OSA-S NPs possessed more potent inhibitory effects on cancer cell proliferation compared to the raw Cur. The results obtained from the current study demonstrated the effectiveness of OSA-S for manufacturing Cur amorphous composite nanoparticles with enhanced solubility, stability, and permeability, which might be valuable for further development of Cur based products for treatment of various diseases.

Oxygen-Deficient FeNbO4-x In-Situ Growth in Honey-Derived N-Doping Porous Carbon for Overall Water Splitting.

It is still a great challenge to reasonably design green, low cost, high activity and good stability catalysts for overall water splitting (OWS). Here, we introduce a novel catalyst with ferric niobate (FeNbO4) in-situ growing in honey-derived porous carbon of high specific surface area, and its catalytic activity is further enhanced by micro-regulation (oxygen vacancy and N-doping). From the experimental results and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, the oxygen vacancy in catalyst FeNbO4-x@NC regulates the local charge density of active site, thus increasing conductivity and optimizing hydrogen/oxygen species adsorption energy. FeNbO4 in-situ grows within N-doping honey-derived porous carbon, which can enhance active specific surface area exposure, strengthen gaseous substances escape rate, and accelerate electrons/ions transfer and electrolytes diffusion. Moreover, in-situ Raman also confirms O-species generation in oxygen evolution reaction (OER). As a result, the catalyst FeNbO4-x@NC shows good electrochemical performance in OER, HER and OWS.

Evaluation of therapeutic effect and prognostic value of 18F-FDG PET/CT in different treatment nodes of DLBCL patients.

BACKGROUND: In the present study, we aimed to investigate the role of baseline (B), interim (I) and end-of-treatment (Eot) 18F-FDG PET/CT in assessing the prognosis of diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), so as to identify patients who need intensive treatment at an early stage. METHODS: A total of 127 DLBCL patients (62 men; 65 women; median age 62 years) were retrospectively analyzed in this study. Baseline (n = 127), interim (n = 127, after 3-4 cycles) and end-of-treatment (n = 53, after 6-8 cycles) PET/CT images were re-evaluated; semi-quantitative parameters such as maximum standardized uptake value of lesion-to-liver ratio (SUVmax(LLR)) and lesion-to-mediastinum ratio (SUVmax(LMR)), total metabolic tumor volume (TMTV) and total metabolic tumor volume (TLG) were recorded. ΔTLG1 was the change of interim relative to baseline TLG (I to B), ΔTLG2 (Eot to B). ΔSUVmax and ΔTMTV were the same algorithm. The visual Deauville 5-point scale (D-5PS) has been adopted as the major criterion for PET evaluation. Visual analysis (VA) and semi-quantitative parameters were assessed for the ability to predict progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) by using Kaplan-Meier method, cox regression and logistic regression analysis. When visual and semi-quantitative analysis are combined, the result is only positive if both are positive. RESULTS: At a median follow-up of 34 months, the median PFS and OS were 20 and 32 months. The survival curve analysis showed that advanced stage and IPI score with poor prognosis, ΔSUVmax(LLR)1 < 89.2%, ΔTMTV1 < 91.8% and ΔTLG1 < 98.8%, ΔSUVmax(LLR)2 < 86.4% were significantly related to the shortening of PFS in patient (p < 0.05). ΔSUVmax(LLR)1 < 83.2% and ΔTLG1 < 97.6% were significantly correlated with the shortening of OS in patients (p < 0.05). Visual analysis showed that incomplete metabolic remission at I-PET and Eot-PET increased the risk of progress and death. In terms of predicting recurrence by I-PET, the combination of visual and semi-quantitative parameters showed higher positive predictive value (PPV) and specificity than a single index. CONCLUSION: Three to four cycles of R-CHOP treatment may be a time point for early prediction of early recurrence/refractory (R/R) patients and active preemptive treatment. Combined visual analysis with semi-quantitative parameters of 18F-FDG PET/CT at interim can improve prognostic accuracy and may allow for more precise screening of patients requiring early intensive therapy.

A fully automatic deep learning-based method for segmenting regions of interest and predicting renal function in pediatric dynamic renal scintigraphy.

OBJECTIVE: Accurate delineation of renal regions of interest (ROIs) is critical for the assessment of renal function in pediatric dynamic renal scintigraphy (DRS). The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a deep learning (DL) model that can fully automatically delineate renal ROIs and calculate renal function in pediatric 99mTechnetium-ethylenedicysteine (99mTc-EC) DRS. METHODS: This study retrospectively analyzed 1,283 pediatric DRS data at a single center from January to December 2018. These patients were divided into training set (n = 1027), validation set (n = 128), and testing set (n = 128). A fully automatic segmentation of ROIs (FASR) model was developed and evaluated. The pixel values of the automatically segmented ROIs were calculated to predict renal blood perfusion rate (BPR) and differential renal function (DRF). Precision, recall rate, intersection over union (IOU), and Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) were used to evaluate the performance of FASR model. Intraclass correlation (ICC) and Pearson correlation analysis were used to compare the consistency of automatic and manual method in assessing the renal function parameters in the testing set. RESULTS: The FASR model achieved a precision of 0.88, recall rate of 0.94, IOU of 0.83, and DSC of 0.91. In the testing set, the r values of BPR and DRF calculated by the two methods were 0.94 (P < 0.01) and 0.97 (P < 0.01), and the ICCs (95% confidence interval CI) were 0.94 (0.90-0.96) and 0.94 (0.91-0.96). CONCLUSION: We propose a reliable and stable DL model that can fully automatically segment ROIs and accurately predict renal function in pediatric 99mTc-EC DRS.

Improved physicochemical stability of fish oil nanoemulsion via a dense interfacial layer formed by hyaluronic acid-poly(glyceryl)10-stearate.

This study aimed to synthesize a novel emulsifier, hyaluronic acid-poly(glyceryl)10-stearate (HA-PG10-C18), and employ it for the fabrication of nanoemulsions incorporating deep-sea fish oil to improve their apparent solubility and physicochemical stability. 1H NMR and FT-IR analyses indicated successful synthesis of HA-PG10-C18. Nanoemulsions of deep-sea fish oil loaded with HA-PG10-C18 (HA-PG10-C18@NE) were successfully fabricated by ultrasonic emulsification. The fixed aqueous layer thickness (FALT) of PG10-C18@NE and HA-PG10-C18@NE was determined and the FALT of both nanoemulsions was similar, while the surface density of HA-PG10-C18@NE (4.92 × 10-12 ng/nm2) is 60 % higher than that of PG10-C18@NE (3.07 × 10-12 ng/nm2). Notably, HA-PG10-C18@NE demonstrated an exceptional physicochemical stability when exposed to various stressed environmental conditions, especially its freeze-thaw stability. Moreover, after simulated in vitro digestion, the HA-PG10-C18@NE exhibited a comparatively greater liberation of free fatty acids (94.0 ± 1.7 %) when compared to the release observed in PG10-C18@NE (85.5 ± 2.2 %).

A Fe2(SO4)3-assisted approach towards green synthesis of cuttlefish ink-derived carbon nanospheres for high-performance supercapacitors.

The conversion of renewable biomass resources into advanced electrode materials through green, simple, and economical methods has become an important research direction in energy storage. In this study, Fe-decorated N/S-codoped porous carbon nanospheres have been successfully fabricated from cuttlefish ink through Fe2(SO4)3-assisted hydrothermal carbonization coupled with heat treatment. The effects of Fe2(SO4)3 dosage on the structure, chemical composition, and capacitive property of carbon nanospheres were investigated. Herein, environmentally friendly Fe2(SO4)3 plays a multifunctional role as the graphitization catalyst, dopant, and morphology-regulating agent. Benefitting from the moderate graphitization degree, great heteroatom content and hierarchical porous structure, the prepared carbon nanospheres exhibit high specific capacitance (311.9 F g-1 at a current density of 0.5 A g-1), good rate capability (19.1% decrease in specific capacitance as current density increases from 0.5 to 10 A g-1), and ideal cycling stability (94.3% capacitance retention after 5000 cycles). In addition, the symmetric supercapacitor assembled with the carbon nanosphere electrodes achieves an energy density of 9.7 Wh kg-1 at a power density of 0.25 kW kg-1 and maintains 91.3% capacitance after 10,000 cycles. The desirable electrochemical performance of cuttlefish ink-derived carbon nanosphere material makes it a potential electrode candidate for supercapacitors.

A Semi-Supervised Speech Deception Detection Algorithm Combining Acoustic Statistical Features and Time-Frequency Two-Dimensional Features.

Human lying is influenced by cognitive neural mechanisms in the brain, and conducting research on lie detection in speech can help to reveal the cognitive mechanisms of the human brain. Inappropriate deception detection features can easily lead to dimension disaster and make the generalization ability of the widely used semi-supervised speech deception detection model worse. Because of this, this paper proposes a semi-supervised speech deception detection algorithm combining acoustic statistical features and time-frequency two-dimensional features. Firstly, a hybrid semi-supervised neural network based on a semi-supervised autoencoder network (AE) and a mean-teacher network is established. Secondly, the static artificial statistical features are input into the semi-supervised AE to extract more robust advanced features, and the three-dimensional (3D) mel-spectrum features are input into the mean-teacher network to obtain features rich in time-frequency two-dimensional information. Finally, a consistency regularization method is introduced after feature fusion, effectively reducing the occurrence of over-fitting and improving the generalization ability of the model. This paper carries out experiments on the self-built corpus for deception detection. The experimental results show that the highest recognition accuracy of the algorithm proposed in this paper is 68.62% which is 1.2% higher than the baseline system and effectively improves the detection accuracy.

The value of [18F]FDG PET/CT in avoiding overtreatment of 131l avidity pulmonary metastasis of differentiated thyroid cancer.

INTRODUCTION: We usually use 131I-whole body scan (131I-WBS) and serum thyroglobulin (Tg) values to determine whether differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) patients need to receive 131I treatment, but not all ¹³¹I-avid (functioning) patients have a good response to ¹³¹I therapy. Our study aims to assess the data of [¹8F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography ([¹8F] FDG PET/CT) to research the status of 131I-avid pulmonary metastases (PMs) and the prognosis of the patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The 131I-avid PMs of DTC patients who underwent [18F]FDG PET/CT scans were included. The maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), metabolic tumour volume (MTV), and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) were used to estimate [¹8F]FDG uptake. The mean follow-up period was 34.14 ± 18.64 months. Progression-free survival (PFS) was estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method. The study was based on per-patient and per-lesion analyses. RESULTS: Among the 42 included patients, 34 (34/42, 81%) showed [¹8F]FDG uptake, which was defined as abnormal foci (SUVmax > 1.0) in the lungs. SUVmax, MTV, TLG, and tumour size were the factors that influenced the outcome of 131I treatment based on Tg levels (p = 0.000, 0.016, 0.000, 0.000) in per-lesion analysis. The only independent factor was the size of the lesion. There was a significant difference in response to ¹³¹I therapy between PMs with F-I+ and F+/I+ according to both Tg levels and Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours (RECIST) (version 1.1) (p = 0.044, 0.001), in the per-lesion analysis. When the changes in size or metabolism of some lesions are inconsistent the prognosis of these patients is poor (p = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: We concluded that higher [18F]FDG uptake and larger tumour size predict poor therapeutic effects and a high risk of disease progression in ¹³¹I-avid PMs of DTC. For evaluating the efficiency of ¹³¹I treatment, per-lesion analyses and assessing the data of [¹8F] FDG PET/CT would be more reliable than per-patient evaluation only. And early focal treatment modalities may improve their life span.