Self-Appraisal of Clinical Competence in Echocardiography of Chinese Intensivists Post Basic Echocardiography Training.

Objectives To learn the echocardiography skills of intensivists after receiving a basic critical care echocardiography training course, and investigate factors that may influence their performance. Methods We completed a web-based questionnaire that assessed the skills in ultrasound scanning techniques of intensivists who took a training course on basic critical care echocardiography held in 2019 and 2020. Mann-Whitney test was used to analyze the factors which might affect their performance on image acquisition, recognizing clinical syndrome, and measuring the diameter of inferior vena cava, left ventricular ejection fraction and left ventricular outflow tract velocity-time integral.Results We enrolled 554 physicians from 412 intensive care units across China. Among them, 185 (33.4%) reported that they had 10%-30% chance of being misled by critical care echocardiography when making therapeutic decision, and 34 (6.1%) reported that the chance was greater than 30%. Intensivists who performed echocardiography under the guidance of a mentor and finished ultrasound scanning more than 10 times per week reported significant higher scores in image acquisition, clinical syndrome recognition, and quantitative measurement of inferior vena cava diameter, left ventricular ejection fraction and left ventricular outflow tract velocity-time integral than those without mentor and performing echocardiography 10 times or less per week respectively (all P < 0.05).Conclusion The skills in diagnostic medical echocardiography of Chinese intensivists after a basic echocardiographic training course remain low, and further quality assurance training program is clearly warranted.

Inadvertent Intraocular Soft Tissue Filler Injection During a Facial Enhancement Procedure.

Iatrogenic needle penetrating ocular injuries are rare but can result in serious consequences. The authors report a case of inadvertent intraocular hyaluronic acid injection during esthetic periorbital facial enhancement. Visual field, visual evoked potential, and electroretinogram were used for monitoring potential side effects.

[Reflections on the Application of Critical Care Ultrasound in Viral Pneumonia Patients with Circulatory Dysfunction-New Classification and Precision Treatment Based on Ciritical Care Ultrasound].

Viruses are among the main pathogens of pulmonary infection and tend to cause pandemics of viral pneumonia. Severe viral pneumonia tends to be accompanied by acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) manifestations, displaying highly specific clinical symptoms that are most prominently expressed in the circulatory system. Shock occurred rarely, it occured at a rather late stage in this outbreak of viral pneumonia. However, because of the extensive use of critical care ultrasound, we have a deeper understanding of the characteristics of acute circulatory disorder caused by severe viral pneumonia, prompting us to reflect more thoroughly about circulatory disorders caused by other types of infections. In general, acute circulatory disorder is not uncommon in severe viral pneumonia in this outbreak, and is characterized by vascular damage, volume disorder and cardiac abnormalities of three types, high stress state, acute right ventricular dysfunction and diffuse cardiac inhibition. In the case of poor management in the early stage, these acute circulatory disorders may develop into shock, or directly cause or aggravate other organ dysfunction, for example, acute kidney injury, exacerbating the adverse outcomes. This has allowed us to reflect more thoroughly on the occurrence and development of acute circulatory disorders caused by other infections. Therefore, the classification of acute circulatory disorders based on the modular assessment of critical care ultrasound will help promote better understanding of acute circulatory disorders and further research.

Poor lung ultrasound score in shock patients admitted to the ICU is associated with worse outcome.

BACKGROUND: The lung ultrasound score has been regarded as a decent semiquantitative score to measure the lung aeration loss. The score has been proven to be valuable in diagnosing and monitoring lung pathology, but no studies have demonstrated its relationship to the outcome. We aimed to investigate the relationship between the lung ultrasound score and outcome in shock patients in the Intensive Care Unit. METHODS: The data were extracted from the SHOCK-ICU study, a 14-month prospective study of shock patients in the Medical Intensive Care Unit in West China Hospital. A bivariate logistic regression model was established to identify the correlation between the lung ultrasound score on admission and the 28-day mortality. For subsequent analyses, we divided patients into lung ultrasound score quartiles, and survival analysis was performed using Cox stratified survival analysis and regression analysis with the Breslow method of ties. RESULTS: A total of 175 cases with a completed lung ultrasound exam were included. The mean APACHE II score was 23.7 ± 8.8, and the 28-day mortality was 46.3% (81/175). The multivariate analysis demonstrated that the lung ultrasound score was an independent risk factor for 28-day mortality, as well as the APACHE II score and lactate level. When divided into lung ultrasound score quartiles, after correcting for the APACHE II score, vasoactive use, PaO2/FiO2, and lactate level, the COX analysis reveals that a higher lung ultrasound score was related to a lower survival rate. Quartile 1 and quartile 2 had a significantly lower hazard ratio versus quartile 4 (OR 0.442[0.215-0.911]; 0.484[0.251-0.934], respectively). CONCLUSIONS: The lung ultrasound score is independently related to the 28-day mortality, as well as the APACHE II score and lactate level, in Intensive Care Unit shock patients. A higher elevated lung ultrasound score on admission is associated with a worse outcome. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study is registered on Clinical Trials. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT03082326 ; retrospectively registered on 3 March 2017.

Sparsity promoting regularization for effective noise suppression in SPECT image reconstruction.

The purpose of this research is to develop an advanced reconstruction method for low-count, hence high-noise, single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) image reconstruction. It consists of a novel reconstruction model to suppress noise while conducting reconstruction and an efficient algorithm to solve the model. A novel regularizer is introduced as the nonconvex denoising term based on the approximate sparsity of the image under a geometric tight frame transform domain. The deblurring term is based on the negative log-likelihood of the SPECT data model. To solve the resulting nonconvex optimization problem a preconditioned fixed-point proximity algorithm (PFPA) is introduced. We prove that under appropriate assumptions, PFPA converges to a local solution of the optimization problem at a global O ( 1 / k ) convergence rate. Substantial numerical results for simulation data are presented to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method in denoising, suppressing artifacts and reconstruction accuracy. We simulate noisy 2D SPECT data from two phantoms: hot Gaussian spheres on random lumpy warm background, and the anthropomorphic brain phantom, at high- and low-noise levels (64k and 90k counts, respectively), and reconstruct them using PFPA. We also perform limited comparative studies with selected competing state-of-the-art total variation (TV) and higher-order TV (HOTV) transform-based methods, and widely used post-filtered maximum-likelihood expectation-maximization. We investigate imaging performance of these methods using: contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), ensemble variance images (EVI), background ensemble noise (BEN), normalized mean-square error (NMSE), and channelized hotelling observer (CHO) detectability. Each of the competing methods is independently optimized for each metric. We establish that the proposed method outperforms the other approaches in all image quality metrics except NMSE where it is matched by HOTV. The superiority of the proposed method is especially evident in the CHO detectability tests results. We also perform qualitative image evaluation for presence and severity of image artifacts where it also performs better in terms of suppressing 'staircase' artifacts, as compared to TV methods. However, edge artifacts on high-contrast regions persist. We conclude that the proposed method may offer a powerful tool for detection tasks in high-noise SPECT imaging.

[Influence of Critical Care Ultrasound Oriented Fluid Management in Different Stages of Shock to the Outcome].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between fluid management oriented by critical care ultrasound and prognosis in patients with shock. METHODS: We analyzed the data of a randomized controlled trial called Critical Care Ultrasound Oriented Shock Treatment (CCUSOST) in the Department of Critical Care Medicine, West China Hospital retrospectively. 77 patients in the critical care ultrasound oriented treatment group (experimental group) and 70 patients in the conventionally treated group as control were included in the statistics, to evaluate the relationship between fluid intake and prognosis. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to analyze risk factors for ICU mortality. RESULTS: The baseline indexes of the patients in the experimental group and the control group were consistent. The ICU mortality of the experimental group was significantly lower than that of the control group (P < 0.05).The fluid intake in the stabilization and de-escalation phases was less than the the control group (P < 0.05). We divided these shock patients into survival group (92 cases) and non-survival (55 cases) according to whether they died in ICU, and the univariate analysis for ICU mortality showed that acute physiology and chronic health evaluation Ⅱ (APACHE Ⅱ) score, SOFA score, Lac, hourly urine output, total fluid intake, fluid intake in the salvage and optimization stages, fluid intake in the stabilization and de-escalation stages were significantly different (P < 0.05) between survivers and non-survivers. Multivariete analysis showed that the fluid intake during the salvage and optimization phases, fluid intake in the stabilization and de-escalation phases were independent risk factors for ICU mortality. CONCLUSION: Critical care ultrasound oriented shock fluid management could reduce fluid intake of stabilization and de-escalation phases, and improved adverse outcome; whether the fluid intake during stabilization and de-escalation phases, or the fluid intake during the salvage and optimization phases, both were associated with patient prognosis.

[Correlation Between the Severity of Lung Ultrasound Score in Non-gravity Dependent Areas and Poor Prognosis of Patients with Shock and on Mechanical Ventilation].

OBJECTIVE: To explore whether ultrasound abnormalities in the non-gravity dependent areas (area 1-2) of the lungs are associated with poor prognosis in patients with shock and on mechanical ventilation. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed the data of lung ultrasound from 181 patients with shock from Apr. 2016 to Nov. 2017. The patients were divided into the survival group and the non-survival group according to the 28 d outcome. Single factor and multivariate Cox regression were used to analyze the relationship between lung ultrasound score of the overall and each area and the 28 d mortality.Kaplan-Meier curve was used to analyze the relationship between the severity of ultrasound lesions in area 1-2 and the prognosis at 28 d. RESULTS: 169 patients were included.There were 106 males (62.7%) and 63 females (37.3%).There were 90 patients in the survivel group and 79 patients in the non-survival group.Single factor Cox regression analysis found that adjusting the age, acute physiology and chronic health evaluation (APACHE) Ⅱ score, lactate level, urine output per hour, application of vasoactive agent, oxygenation index, lungs ultrasound score of area 1-6, area 1-2 and area 3-4 were associated with 28 d mortality. Multivariate Cox regression revealed that lung ultrasound score of area 1-2 was the independent risk factor of 28 d mortality, as well as APACHE Ⅱ score and lactate level. The Kaplan-Meier curve found that the more severe the lesion in area 1-2, the lower the survival rate at 28 d. CONCLUSION: Lung ultrasound score of area 1-2 in patients with shock and on mechanical ventilation may be a predictor of poor prognosis at 28 d.

[Predictive Value of Early Changes in Sublingual Microcirculation on Organ Failure of Patients with Septic Shock].

OBJECTIVES: To determine the predictive value of early changes in sublingual microcirculation on organ failure of patients with septic shock. METHODS: Side-streamdark field imaging (SDF) videomicroscopy was performed to assess sublingual microcirculation of 34 adult patients at 0 h, 6 h and 24 h after they were diagnosed with septic shock.The patients were subject to sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA24 h-0 h). The patients with ΔSOFA24 h-0 h≥1 (deteriorated conditions) were compared with those with ΔSOFA24 h-0 h<1 in regard to sublingual microcirculation and the traditional hemodynamic indicators such as heart rate, mean arterial pressure, central venous pressure, urine output and lactate. RESULTS: No significant baseline differences were found between the two groups of patients in age, sex and acute physiology and chronic health evaluation Ⅱ(APACHE Ⅱ), nor any differences in the traditional hemodynamic indicators, as well as dose of vasopressor, infusion of crystalloids, and colloids after septic shock was diagnosed. The patients with deteriorated conditions had lower proportion of perfused small vessels (PPVs) compared with the non-deteriorated patients at 0 h [(75.96±10.55)% vs.(84.03±10.16)%, P=0.032] and 24 h [(79.43±9.23)% vs.(86.32±9.02)%, P=0.037]. The ROC analysis showed a greater area under the curve (AUC) for PPVs at 0 h [0.750 (95%CI, 0.586-0.914)] compared with the AUC for Lac at 0 h [0.588 (95%CI, 0.370-0.805) ], albeit a lack of statistical significance ( P>0.05). The incidence of organ failure in the patients with a lower than optimal cut-off point (81.5%) of PPVs was significantly higher than that of those above the cut-off point (71.4% vs. 20.0%). CONCLUSIONS: Changes in sublingual microcirculation (e.g. PPVs) can predict the development of organ failure earlier than systemic hemodynamic indicators in patients with septic shock.

Cardiac index and heart rate as prognostic indicators for mortality in septic shock: A retrospective cohort study from the MIMIC-IV database.

Background: Septic shock is a life-threatening condition that can lead to organ dysfunction and death. In the ICU, monitoring of cardiac index (CI) and heart rate (HR) is commonly used to guide management and predict outcomes in septic shock patients. However, there is a lack of research on the association between CI and HR and the risk of mortality in this patient population. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between different levels of CI and HR and mortality in septic shock patients. Methods: Data analysis was obtained from the MIMIC-IV version 2.0 database. Sepsis and septic shock were primarily defined by sepsis-3, the third international consensus on sepsis and septic shock. CI was computed using cardiac output (CO) and body surface area (BSA). To evaluate the incidence of CI with respect to each endpoint (7-, 14-, 21-, and 28-day mortality), a restricted cubic spline curve function (RCS) was used. The optimal cutoff value for predicted mortality was determined using the Youden index. Analyses of KM curves, cox regression, and logistic regression were conducted separately to determine the relationship between various CI and HR and 28-day mortality. Results: This study included 1498 patients with septic shock. A U-shaped relationship between CI levels and risk of mortality in septic shock was found by RCS analysis (p < 0.001). CI levels within the intermediate range of 1.85-2.8 L/min/m2 were associated with a mortality hazard ratio (HR) < 1. In contrast, low CI (HR = 1.87 95% CI: 1.01-3.49) and high CI (HR = 1.93 95% CI: 1.26-2.97) had a significantly increased risk of mortality. The AUC for heart rate prediction of mortality by Youden index analysis was 0.70 95%CI:0.64-0.76 with a cut-off value of 93.63 bpm. According to the characteristics of HR and CI, patients were divided into six subgroups HR↓+CI intermediate group (n = 772), HR↓+CI↓ group (n = 126), HR↓+CI↑ group (n = 294), HR↑+CI intermediate group (n = 132), HR↑+CI↓ group (n = 24), and HR↑+CI↑ group (n = 150). The KM curves, COX regression, and logistic regression analysis showed that the survival rates the of HR↓+CI intermediate group, HR↓+CI↓ group, and HR↓+CI↑ were higher than the other groups. The risk factors of HR↑+CI intermediate group, HR↑+CI↓, and HR↑+CI↑ with ICU 28-day mortality were HR = 2.91 (95% CI: 1.39-5.97), HR = 3.67 (95% CI: 1.39-11.63), and HR = 5.77 (95% CI: 2.98-11.28), respectively. Conclusion: Our retrospective study shows that monitoring cardiac index and heart rate in patients with septic shock may help predict the organismal response and hemodynamic consequences, as well as the prognosis. Thus, healthcare providers should carefully monitor changes in these parameters in septic shock patients transferred to the ICU for treatment.

Successful remission induction of IgG4-related ophthalmic disease by obinutuzumab therapy: a retrospective study of 8 patients.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the therapeutic efficacy and safety of obinutuzumab in remission induction for IgG4-related ophthalmic disease (IgG4-ROD) patients. METHODS: Eight IgG4-ROD patients were retrospectively enrolled. They were intravenously administered 1000 mg obinutuzumab at baseline and examined for changes in physical signs, orbital structure imaging parameters, IgG4-related disease responder index (IgG4-RD RI), serological index, and adverse events during treatment. The number of treatment sessions was based on treatment response. RESULTS: The mean IgG4-RD RI scores of all patients at baseline (7.75 ± 2.92) and after treatment (2.00 ± 0.76) were highly significantly different (P < 0.001). Six patients achieved complete remission (CR) (75%) and two patients achieved partial remission (25%). The mean serum IgG4 levels at baseline (9.45 ± 6.95 g/L) and after treatment (1.55 ± 1.09 g/L) showed a mean decrease of 83% (P = 0.0079). The serum IgG4 level correlated well with IgG4-RD RI at baseline and that after each treatment (r = 0.852, P < 0.01; r = 0.78, P < 0.001). In patients with CR, the serum IgG4 levels at baseline correlated positively with dose numbers required for CR (r = 0.86, P < 0.05). Five patients (62.5%) experienced infusion-related reactions (IRRs) during the first obinutuzumab infusion, while only one (12.5%) experienced IRRs during all subsequent eight infusions. CONCLUSION: Obinutuzumab is a safe and promising therapeutic option for IgG4-ROD. It rapidly reduces ocular inflammation and serum IgG4 levels to avoid excessive corticosteroid usage and reduce potential risk of adverse events.

Role of 2-day critical ultrasound training curriculum in guiding clinical activities in China.

BACKGROUND: The effectiveness of critical care ultrasound has been demonstrated and training for it is urgent. Critical Care Ultrasound Study Group (CCUSG) has been dedicated to ultrasound training. The aim of the study was to evaluate course structure and training effect and provide improvement suggestions for future training. METHODS: A multicenter retrospective study was conducted. All participants went through a 2-day training curriculum based on the critical care ultrasonic examination (CCUE) protocol. Pre- and post-class evaluation were applied and data were collected. Non-parametric tests were adopted for the comparison, and a Generalized Linear Model (GLM) was used for further analysis. RESULTS: A total number of 792 trainees, with a mean age of 35.8, participated in the study. There were more males in the study population. Most of the trainees were attendings, and most of them had bachelor's degrees, worked at tertiary hospitals and had a mean working experience of 6.9 years. The scores of all trainees were improved to various degrees after the course. An increase from 50% to 72% (P≤0.001) was seen in theory test scores. All the competency assessment scores, including IAS (34% to 50% for cardiac images and 30% to 60% for pulmonary images), IPS (30% to 50%) and AAS (31% to 44%), were improved. A questionnaire after class suggested that 88.0% of the participants found the training course very useful. CONCLUSION: 2-day training course can improve the ability of physicians to assess critically ill patients with the help of the ultrasound.

Platelets from WAS patients show an increased susceptibility to ex vivo phagocytosis.

The thrombocytopenia of Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS) is thought to be due to both reduced platelet production and accelerated platelet consumption. We have previously demonstrated that platelets from WASP-deficient mice are consumed more rapidly in vivo than are WT platelets, and that opsonization accelerates their uptake by bone marrow- derived macrophages more than it does that of WT platelets. Here we asked whether platelets from WAS patients show similar features. We show that ex vivo phagocytosis by activated THP-1 cells of DIO-labeled platelets from a series of WAS or XLT patients is increased in comparison to that of normal control platelets. Using a numerical analysis method, we distinguish this effect from a concurrent effect on the amount of detectable fluorescent signal transferred to the macrophage per phagocytosed platelet. We show that the latter quantity is reduced by platelet WASP deficiency, as might be expected if the fluorescence transferred from these smaller platelets is more rapidly quenched. We are unable to detect a differential effect of opsonization with anti-CD61 antibody on the uptake of WASP(-) vs. WT platelets. However, the high probability of phagocytosis per adsorbed WASP(-) platelet could limit the sensitivity of the assay in this case. We also see no effect of sera from WAS patients on the uptake of normal control platelets, suggesting that in vivo opsonization is not the cause of increased uptake of WASP(-) platelets. Finally, we show little, if any, increase in the reticulated platelet fraction in WAS patients, suggesting that impaired production of reticulated platelets contributes to the thrombocytopenia. Our findings suggest that rapid in vivo platelet consumption contributes significantly to the thrombocytopenia of WAS. They also demonstrate the feasibility of routinely performing functional assays of phagocytosis of small numbers of platelets obtained at remote locations, a method which should be applicable to the study of other types of thrombocytopenia such as ITP.

[Measurement of peak velocity variation of common carotid artery with bedside ultrasound to estimate preload in surgery ICU].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the feasibility and accuracy of bedside ultrasound measuring peak velocity variation of common carotid artery to estimate preload of the patients in surgery ICU. METHODS: In this prospective cohort study, SICU patients with sinus rhythm and positive pressure ventilation were included. The peak velocity variation in common carotid artery (delta V peak) during each respiratory circle was measured by ICU resident with short-term training and experienced attending songrapher. Stroke volume before and after the fluid challenge was also measured by the experienced songrapher as the gold standard of fluid responsiveness. Then the ROC, feasibility and accuracy of the diagnosis trial were analyzed. RESULTS: There were 46 patients included. The peak velocity variation of common carotid artery measured by the attending (delta V peak) is highly related with delta SV (r1 = 0.76, P < 0.05). Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.95 (P < 0.05). The peak velocity variation of common carotid artery (delta V peak) > 12.1% predicted fluid responsiveness with sensitivity of 90.9%, specificity of 83.3%, positive predictive value of 83.3% and negative predictive value of 90.9%. The peak velocity variation of common carotid artery measured by the resident (delta V peak2) were highly related with delta V peak1 (R2 = 0.68, P < 0.05), the AUC was 0.94. CONCLUSION: Measurement of peak velocity variation of common carotid artery with bedside ultrasound can accurately estimate the volume status of the patients in surgery ICU, and it is easy to be performed by the residents of ICU.

MDAlmc: A Novel Low-rank Matrix Completion Model for MiRNADisease Association Prediction by Integrating Similarities among MiRNAs and Diseases.

INTRODUCTION: The importance of microRNAs (miRNAs) has been emphasized by an increasing number of studies, and it is well-known that miRNA dysregulation is associated with a variety of complex diseases. Revealing the associations between miRNAs and diseases are essential to disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. METHODS: However, traditional experimental methods in validating the roles of miRNAs in diseases could be very expensive, labor-intensive and time-consuming. Thus, there is a growing interest in predicting miRNA-disease associations by computational methods. Though many computational methods are in this category, their prediction accuracy needs further improvement for downstream experimental validation. In this study, we proposed a novel model to predict miRNA-disease associations by low-rank matrix completion (MDAlmc) integrating miRNA functional similarity, disease semantic similarity, and known miRNA-disease associations. In the 5-fold cross-validation, MDAlmc achieved an average AUROC of 0.8709 and AUPRC of 0.4172, better than those of previous models. RESULTS: Among the case studies of three important human diseases, the top 50 predicted miRNAs of 96% (breast tumors), 98% (lung tumors), and 90% (ovarian tumors) have been confirmed by previous literatures. And the unconfirmed miRNAs were also validated to be potential disease-associated miRNAs. CONCLUSION: MDAlmc is a valuable computational resource for miRNA-disease association prediction.

Comparison of the biomechanical properties of internal fixation materials for zygomaticomaxillary complex fractures, A finite element analysis.

Regarding the three distinct types of zygomaticomaxillary complex (ZMC) fractures, this study developed finite element models (FEMs) of absorbable material and titanium material for repair and fixation, respectively. By applying a force of 120 N to the model to simulate the masseter muscle strength, the maximum stress and displacement of the repair materials and the fracture ends were measured. In discussing various models, the maximum stress values of absorbable and titanium materials are less than their yield strength, and the maximum displacement values of the titanium material and fracture end were less than 0.1 mm and 0.2 mm. The maximum displacement values of absorbable material and fracture end in incomplete zygomatic fracture and dislocation were less than 0.1 mm and 0.2 mm. While in the zygomatic complex complete fractures and dislocation, the maximum displacement values of the absorbable material and the fracture end exceeded 0.1 mm and 0.2 mm. Consequently, the distinction between the maximum displacement values of the two materials was 0.08 mm, and the distinction between the maximum displacement values of the fracture ends was 0.22 mm, despite the fact that the absorbable material can withstand the fracture end's strength, it is not as stable as the titanium material.

Two new stenosis detection methods of coronary angiograms.

PURPOSE: Coronary angiography is the "gold standard" for diagnosing coronary artery disease. At present, the methods for detecting and evaluating coronary artery stenosis cannot satisfy the clinical needs, e.g., there is no prior study of detecting stenoses in prespecified vessel segments, which is necessary in clinical practice. METHODS: Two vascular stenosis detection methods are proposed to assist the diagnosis. The first one is an automatic method, which can automatically extract the entire coronary artery tree and mark all the possible stenoses. The second one is an interactive method. With this method, the user can choose any vessel segment to do further analysis of its stenoses. RESULTS: Experiments show that the proposed methods are robust for angiograms with various vessel structures. The precision, sensitivity, and [Formula: see text] score of the automatic stenosis detection method are 0.821, 0.757, and 0.788, respectively. Further investigation proves that the interactive method can provide a more precise outcome of stenosis detection, and our quantitative analysis is closer to reality. CONCLUSION: The proposed automatic method and interactive method are effective and can complement each other in clinical practice. The first method can be used for preliminary screening, and the second method can be used for further quantitative analysis. We believe the proposed solution is more suitable for the clinical diagnosis of CAD.

Preferentially expressed antigen in melanoma immunohistochemistry as an adjunct for differential diagnosis in acral lentiginous melanoma and acral nevi.

Preferentially expressed antigen in melanoma (PRAME) has shown promising utility in distinguishing benign melanocytic lesions from melanomas, but knowledge of its expression pattern in acral lentiginous melanoma (ALM) and acral nevi (ANs) is limited. Immunohistochemical expression of PRAME was examined in 75 ALMs and 34 ANs. The clinical and histopathologic characteristics of patients with ALM were collected. PRAME was immunoreactive in 89.3% (67/75) of ALMs, but entirely negative in 94.1% (32/34) of ANs. When staining at least 50% of lesional melanocytes was determined as positivity, the sensitivity and specificity of PRAME for distinguishing ALM from ANs were 69.3% and 100%, respectively. Seventy-one cases of ALMs had tumor cells in the epidermis; 71.8% (51/71) of them showed positive for PRAME. By contrast, 61 ALMs had tumor cells in the dermis; 65.6% (40/61) exhibited positive expression. Twenty-nine of 39 (74.4%) epithelioid cell ALMs were observed to be positive for PRAME. By comparison, 63.8% (23/36) of ALMs with spindle tumor cells were positive for PRAME. However, PRAME positive expression was not associated with any clinical and histopathologic characteristics of patients with ALM, including Breslow thickness, ulcer, cytomorphology, lymph node metastasis, or tumor-infiltrated lymphocytes (TILs). Nevertheless, we observed that 82.6% (19/23) of ALMs with lymph node involvement at diagnosis expressed PRAME, compared with 57.6% (20/35) of those without. In summary, PRAME immunohistochemistry can serve as a helpful adjunct in the differential diagnosis of ALMs and ANs with good sensitivity and high specificity. Additionally, PRAME tends to have a higher positive rate in epidermal melanocytes than in the dermis and is inclined to express in epithelioid cells than in spindle cells of ALMs.

Segmentation and Automatic Identification of Vasculature in Coronary Angiograms.

Coronary angiography is the "gold standard" for the diagnosis of coronary heart disease, of which vessel segmentation and identification technologies are paid much attention to. However, because of the characteristics of coronary angiograms, such as the complex and variable morphology of coronary artery structure and the noise caused by various factors, there are many difficulties in these studies. To conquer these problems, we design a preprocessing scheme including block-matching and 3D filtering, unsharp masking, contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization, and multiscale image enhancement to improve the quality of the image and enhance the vascular structure. To achieve vessel segmentation, we use the C-V model to extract the vascular contour. Finally, we propose an improved adaptive tracking algorithm to realize automatic identification of the vascular skeleton. According to our experiments, the vascular structures can be successfully highlighted and the background is restrained by the preprocessing scheme, the continuous contour of the vessel is extracted accurately by the C-V model, and it is verified that the proposed tracking method has higher accuracy and stronger robustness compared with the existing adaptive tracking method.

Wavelet Scattering Transform for ECG Beat Classification.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) records the electrical activity of the heart; it contains rich pathological information on cardiovascular diseases, such as arrhythmia. However, it is difficult to visually analyze ECG signals due to their complexity and nonlinearity. The wavelet scattering transform can generate translation-invariant and deformation-stable representations of ECG signals through cascades of wavelet convolutions with nonlinear modulus and averaging operators. We proposed a novel approach using wavelet scattering transform to automatically classify four categories of arrhythmia ECG heartbeats, namely, nonectopic (N), supraventricular ectopic (S), ventricular ectopic (V), and fusion (F) beats. In this study, the wavelet scattering transform extracted 8 time windows from each ECG heartbeat. Two dimensionality reduction methods, principal component analysis (PCA) and time window selection, were applied on the 8 time windows. These processed features were fed to the neural network (NN), probabilistic neural network (PNN), and k-nearest neighbour (KNN) classifiers for classification. The 4th time window in combination with KNN (k = 4) has achieved the optimal performance with an averaged accuracy, positive predictive value, sensitivity, and specificity of 99.3%, 99.6%, 99.5%, and 98.8%, respectively, using tenfold cross-validation. Thus, our proposed model is capable of highly accurate arrhythmia classification and will provide assistance to physicians in ECG interpretation.

Pharmacokinetics of Sodium Selenite in Rat Plasma and Tissues After Intragastric Administration.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the absorption, distribution, excretion, and pharmacokinetics of selenite in rats after intragastric administration, and thus illustrate the efficiency of selenium (Se) supplementation. After a single gavage of sodium selenite, a concentration of Se in plasma and tissues was determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) at different time points. Through fitting the data with the metabolic kinetic model, the corresponding kinetic parameters were determined for plasma and tissues, including kidney, liver, heart, muscle, and gonad. While the metabolic kinetics of sodium selenite in plasma, liver, and kidney of rats was well reflected by a two-compartment open model, that in heart and gonad was fitted to a one-compartment open model, and that in muscle was fitted to a one-compartment open model with a lag time. The results indicate that sodium selenite was absorbed by plasma and tissues quickly and was eliminated slowly after intragastric administration. Based on the results, we propose that multi-supplementation of Se with low dosage is superior to single supplementation with high dosage, in terms of avoiding selenosis.