Cell2Cell: Explorative Cell Interaction Analysis in Multi-Volumetric Tissue Data.

We present Cell2Cell, a novel visual analytics approach for quantifying and visualizing networks of cell-cell interactions in three-dimensional (3D) multi-channel cancerous tissue data. By analyzing cellular interactions, biomedical experts can gain a more accurate understanding of the intricate relationships between cancer and immune cells. Recent methods have focused on inferring interaction based on the proximity of cells in low-resolution 2D multi-channel imaging data. By contrast, we analyze cell interactions by quantifying the presence and levels of specific proteins within a tissue sample (protein expressions) extracted from high-resolution 3D multi-channel volume data. Such analyses have a strong exploratory nature and require a tight integration of domain experts in the analysis loop to leverage their deep knowledge. We propose two complementary semi-automated approaches to cope with the increasing size and complexity of the data interactively: On the one hand, we interpret cell-to-cell interactions as edges in a cell graph and analyze the image signal (protein expressions) along those edges, using spatial as well as abstract visualizations. Complementary, we propose a cell-centered approach, enabling scientists to visually analyze polarized distributions of proteins in three dimensions, which also captures neighboring cells with biochemical and cell biological consequences. We evaluate our application in three case studies, where biologists and medical experts use Cell2Cell to investigate tumor micro-environments to identify and quantify T-cell activation in human tissue data. We confirmed that our tool can fully solve the use cases and enables a streamlined and detailed analysis of cell-cell interactions.

The Timing of Pregnancies After Bariatric Surgery has No Impact on Children's Health-a Nationwide Population-based Registry Analysis.

PURPOSE: Bariatric surgery has a favorable effect on fertility in women. However, due to a lack of data regarding children's outcomes, the ideal time for conception following bariatric surgery is unknown. Current guidelines advise avoiding pregnancy during the initial weight loss phase (12-24 months after surgery) as there may be potential risks to offspring. Thus, we aimed to analyze health outcomes in children born to mothers who had undergone bariatric surgery. The surgery-to-delivery interval was studied. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A nationwide registry belonging to the Austrian health insurance funds and containing health-related data claims was searched. Data for all women who had bariatric surgery in Austria between 01/2010 and 12/2018 were analyzed. A total of 1057 women gave birth to 1369 children. The offspring's data were analyzed for medical health claims based on International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes and number of days hospitalized. Three different surgery-to-delivery intervals were assessed: 12, 18, and 24 months. RESULTS: Overall, 421 deliveries (31%) were observed in the first 2 years after surgery. Of these, 70 births (5%) occurred within 12 months after surgery. The median time from surgery to delivery was 34 months. Overall, there were no differences noted in frequency of hospitalization and diagnoses leading to hospitalization in the first year of life, regardless of the surgery-to-delivery interval. CONCLUSION: Pregnancies in the first 24 months after bariatric surgery were common. Importantly, the surgery-to-delivery interval had no significant impact on the health outcome of the children.

ScrollyVis: Interactive Visual Authoring of Guided Dynamic Narratives for Scientific Scrollytelling.

Visual stories are an effective and powerful tool to convey specific information to a diverse public. Scrollytelling is a recent visual storytelling technique extensively used on the web, where content appears or changes as users scroll up or down a page. By employing the familiar gesture of scrolling as its primary interaction mechanism, it provides users with a sense of control, exploration and discoverability while still offering a simple and intuitive interface. In this article, we present a novel approach for authoring, editing, and presenting data-driven scientific narratives using scrollytelling. Our method flexibly integrates common sources such as images, text, and video, but also supports more specialized visualization techniques such as interactive maps as well as scalar field and mesh data visualizations. We show that scrolling navigation can be used to traverse dynamic narratives and demonstrate how it can be combined with interactive parameter exploration. The resulting system consists of an extensible web-based authoring tool capable of exporting stand-alone stories that can be hosted on any web server. We demonstrate the power and utility of our approach with case studies from several diverse scientific fields and with a user study including 12 participants of diverse professional backgrounds. Furthermore, an expert in creating interactive articles assessed the usefulness of our approach and the quality of the created stories.

Sex-Specific Differences in Mortality of Patients with a History of Bariatric Surgery: a Nation-Wide Population-Based Study.

PURPOSE: Bariatric surgery reduces mortality in patients with severe obesity and is predominantly performed in women. Therefore, an analysis of sex-specific differences after bariatric surgery in a population-based dataset from Austria was performed. The focus was on deceased patients after bariatric surgery. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The Austrian health insurance funds cover about 98% of the Austrian population. Medical health claims data of all Austrians who underwent bariatric surgery from 01/2010 to 12/2018 were analyzed. In total, 19,901 patients with 107,806 observed years postoperative were eligible for this analysis. Comorbidities based on International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-codes and drug intake documented by Anatomical Therapeutical Chemical (ATC)-codes were analyzed in patients deceased and grouped according to clinically relevant obesity-associated comorbidities: diabetes mellitus (DM), cardiovascular disease (CV), psychiatric disorder (PSY), and malignancy (M). RESULTS: In total, 367 deaths were observed (1.8%) within the observation period from 01/2010 to 04/2020. The overall mortality rate was 0.34% per year of observation and significantly higher in men compared to women (0.64 vs. 0.24%; p < 0.001(Chi-squared)). Moreover, the 30-day mortality was 0.19% and sixfold higher in men compared to women (0.48 vs. 0.08%; p < 0.001). CV (82%) and PSY (55%) were the most common comorbidities in deceased patients with no sex-specific differences. Diabetes (38%) was more common in men (43 vs. 33%; p = 0.034), whereas malignant diseases (36%) were more frequent in women (30 vs. 41%; p = 0.025). CONCLUSION: After bariatric surgery, short-term mortality as well as long-term mortality was higher in men compared to women. In deceased patients, diabetes was more common in men, whereas malignant diseases were more common in women.

[Smart Rehab: App-based rehabilitation training for upper extremity amputees - Case Report]. / Smart Rehab: App-basiertes Rehabilitations-Training für Patienten nach Amputation der oberen Extremität ­ Case Report.

BACKGROUND: Control of a myoelectric prostheses entails rehabilitative training, based on repetitive exercises with a physiotherapist. However, many patients lack the motivation to continue the exercises in their home environment. Mobile games on the smartphone can provide patients with long-term motivation to continue the repetitive exercises that prepare the muscles for controlling a prosthesis at home. The aim of this study was to confirm the feasibility of a myoelectrical controlled mobile application and the impact of this game-based rehabilitation on the patient's maximum voluntary contraction strength, proportionally activated muscle contraction and ability to separate muscle groups. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We developed a training system that consisted of a game-based mobile rehabilitation application that is controlled by the patient's muscle signal, a tablet to play on, an electrode armband and a manual. So far two patients have participated in this study. They were asked to use the app for 4 weeks at home, 5 times a week, for 10 to 15 minutes. The intervention was designed in a randomised controlled pre-test/post-test design and patients were measured for neuromuscular parameters before the intervention and afterwards. Evaluated parameters included maximum voluntary contraction force, muscle separation, proportional control and muscle endurance, as well as user statistics. RESULTS: After training with the app, a significant improvement (p < .01) in all examined clinical parameters for myoelectric control of a prosthesis could be achieved. The user statistics showed a high motivation to play the game and ran an additional diagnostic EMG-Test on one patient; the other participating patient, however, had played the game but neglected the EMG test and only completed half of it. CONCLUSION: The training app not only provides instruction and feedback on the correct execution of myoelectric commands, but also maintains patient motivation through various game modes and feedback elements. The rehabilitation process could be monitored and compared through an overview of training progress in the form of user statistics and high scores. It could be shown that patients with upper extremity amputation could significantly improve their neuromuscular control, strength and coordination after using the game-based app so that they can fully benefit from the potential of a myoelectric prosthesis.