Image-guided surgical planning of percutaneous nephrolithotomy with patient-specific CTRs.

PURPOSE: We propose the utilization of patient-specific concentric-tube robots (CTRs) whose designs are optimized to enhance their volumetric reachability of the renal stone, thus reducing the morbidities associated with percutaneous nephrolithotomy procedures. By employing a nested optimization-driven scheme, this work aims to determine a single surgical tract through which the patient-tailored CTR is deployed. We carry out a sensitivity analysis on the combined percutaneous access and optimized CTR design with respect to breathing-induced excursion of the kidneys based on preoperative images. Further, an investigation is also performed of the appropriateness and effectiveness of the percutaneous access provided by the proposed algorithm compared to that of an expert urologist. METHODS: The method is based on an ellipsoidal approximation to the renal calculi and a grid search over candidate skin areas and available renal calyces using an anatomically constrained kinematic mapping of the CTR. Percutaneous access is selected for collision-free CTR deployment to the centroid of the stones with minimal positional error at the renal calyx. Further optimization of the CTR design results in a robot tailored to the therapeutic anatomical features of each clinical case. The study examined 14 sets of clinical data of PCNL patients, analyzing stone reachability using preoperative images and breathing-induced motions of the kidney. An experienced urologist qualitatively assessed the adequacy of percutaneous access generated by the algorithm. RESULTS: An assessment conducted by an expert urologist found that the percutaneous accesses produced by the proposed approach were found to be comparable to those chosen by the expert surgeon in most clinical cases. The simulated results demonstrated a mean volume coverage of [Formula: see text] for static anatomy and [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] when considering a 1 cm excursion of the kidney in the craniocaudal directions due to respiration or tool-tissue interaction. CONCLUSION: The optimization-driven scheme for determining a single tract surgical plan, coupled with the use of a patient-specific CTR, shows promising results for improving percutaneous access in PCNL procedures. This approach clearly shows the potential for enhancing the quality and suitability of percutaneous accesses, addressing the challenges posed by staghorn and non-staghorn stones during PCNL procedures. Further research involving clinical validation is necessary to confirm these findings and explore the potential clinical benefits of the approach.

Emotional Voice Puppetry.

The paper presents emotional voice puppetry, an audio-based facial animation approach to portray characters with vivid emotional changes. The lips motion and the surrounding facial areas are controlled by the contents of the audio, and the facial dynamics are established by category of the emotion and the intensity. Our approach is exclusive because it takes account of perceptual validity and geometry instead of pure geometric processes. Another highlight of our approach is the generalizability to multiple characters. The findings showed that training new secondary characters when the rig parameters are categorized as eye, eyebrows, nose, mouth, and signature wrinkles is significant in achieving better generalization results compared to joint training. User studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our approach can be applicable in AR/VR and 3DUI, namely, virtual reality avatars/self-avatars, teleconferencing and in-game dialogue.

Automatic Recognition Method of Machine English Translation Errors Based on Multisignal Feature Fusion.

The current automatic recognition method of machine English translation errors has poor semantic analysis ability, resulting in low accuracy of recognition results. Therefore, this paper designs an automatic recognition method for machine English translation errors based on multifeature fusion. Manually classify and summarize the real error sentence pairs, falsify a large amount of data by means of data enhancement, enhance the effect and robustness of the machine translation error detection model, and add the source text to translation length ratio information and the translation language model PPL into the model input. The score feature information can further improve the classification accuracy of the error detection model. Based on this error detection scheme, the detection results can be used for subsequent error correction and can also be used for error prompts to provide translation user experience; it can also be used for evaluation indicators of machine translation effects. The experimental results show that the word posterior probability features calculated by different methods have a significant impact on the classification error rate, and adding source word features based on the combination of word posterior probability and linguistic features can significantly reduce the classification error rate, to improve the translation error detection ability.

Characterizing Detection Thresholds for Six Orthogonal Modes of Vibrotactile Display Via Stylus With Precision Grasp.

In this paper, we characterize the detection thresholds in six orthogonal modes of vibrotactile haptic display via stylus, including three orthogonal force directions and three orthogonal torque directions at the haptic interaction point. A psychophysical study is performed to determine detection thresholds over the frequency range 20-250 Hz, for six distinct styluses. Analysis of variance is used to test the hypothesis that force signals, as well as torque signals, applied in different directions have different detection thresholds. We find that people are less sensitive to force signals parallel to the stylus than to those orthogonal to the stylus at low frequencies, and far more sensitive to torque signals about the stylus than to those orthogonal to the stylus. Optimization techniques are used to determine four independent two-parameter models to describe the frequency-dependent thresholds for each of the orthogonal force and torque modes for a stylus that is approximately radially symmetric; six independent models are required if the stylus is not well approximated as radially symmetric. Finally, we provide a means to estimate the model parameters given stylus parameters, for a range of styluses, and to estimate the coupling between orthogonal modes.

Characterisation of Pythium aristosporum Oomycete-A Novel Pathogen Causing Rice Seedling Blight in China.

Rice seedling blight is a globally occurring seedling disease caused by multiple pathogens. It is currently the most common disease affecting rice production in northeast China; hence, determining the causal agents, including its biological characteristics, host range, and fungicide efficacy is vital for its effective management. The present study obtained 45 pathogenic isolates from diseased rice seedlings in Suihua, Heilongjiang Province, China. Of these, five pathogens were identified based on their morphology and molecular identification, while 10 oomycete isolates were identified as Pythium aristosporum-the first to be reported in rice seedling blight. Its optimum growth conditions include a temperature of 25 °C, pH 6, and photoperiod of 24 h. Except for soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.), black soybean (Glycine max var.), and cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.), P. aristosporum can potentially infect and cause seedling blight on other hosts, such as wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), maize (Zea mays L.), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench), alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), oats (Avena sativa L.), and white clover (Trifolium repens L.). Its isolates were found to be highly sensitive to metalaxyl + propamocarb (EC50 = 0.0138 µg/mL) with 84.1% efficacy at 313 µg/mL. These results can serve as the basis for controlling P. aristosporum.

On Surgical Planning of Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy with Patient-Specific CTRs.

Percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) is considered a first-choice minimally invasive procedure for treating kidney stones larger than 2 cm. It yields higher stone-free rates than other minimally invasive techniques and is employed when extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy or uteroscopy are, for instance, infeasible. Using this technique, surgeons create a tract through which a scope is inserted for gaining access to the stones. Traditional PCNL tools, however, present limited maneuverability, may require multiple punctures and often lead to excessive torquing of the instruments which can damage the kidney parenchyma and thus increase the risk of hemorrhage. We approach this problem by proposing a nested optimization-driven scheme for determining a single tract surgical plan along which a patient-specific concentric-tube robot (CTR) is deployed so as to enhance manipulability along the most dominant directions of the stone presentations. The approach is illustrated with seven sets of clinical data from patients who underwent PCNL. The simulated results may set the stage for achieving higher stone-free rates through single tract PCNL interventions while decreasing blood loss.

Vibrotactile Display of Patterned Surface Textures With Kinesthetic Haptic Devices Using Balanced Impulses.

Kinesthetic haptic devices are designed primarily to display quasistatic and low-bandwidth forces and moments. Existing methods for vibrotactile display sometimes introduce haptic and/or audio artifacts. In this article, we propose a method to display vibrotactile stimulus signals of moderate to high frequency (20-500 Hz) using kinesthetic haptic devices with a standard 1 kHz haptic update rate. Our method combines symmetric square-wave signals whose periods are even multiples of the haptic update period with asymmetric square-wave signals whose periods are odd multiples of the haptic update period, while ensuring that the positive and negative impulses are balanced in both cases, and utilizing the just noticeable difference in frequency discrimination to avoid the need to display other frequencies. For frequencies at which the above method is insufficient, corresponding to a small band near 400 Hz for a 1 kHz update rate, we utilize a signal-mixing method. Our complete method is then extended to render haptic gratings by measuring scanning velocity, converting the local spatial frequency to its equivalent instantaneous temporal frequency, and displaying a single full-period vibration event. In a series of human-subject studies, we showed that our proposed method is preferred over existing methods for vibrotactile display of signals with relatively high-frequency content.

Addendum to "Dimensional Reduction for 6D Vibrotactile Display".

In our recent article, we found a general quadratic weighting function to predict how a six-dimensional (6D) vibrotactile stimulus rendered at the haptic interaction point (HIP) of a kinesthetic haptic interface, with the stylus held in a precision pen-hold grasp, is mapped to an equivalent one-dimensional (1D) stimulus that is normalized by the detection threshold. However, in that work we did not constrain the weighting function to be positive semidefinite, and as a result, the model will not generalize well to all future 6D inputs. In this addendum, we reconsider the original data set, incorporating the positive-semidefinite constraint. We find that as few as four independent parameters are required to describe the coupling, and the model has one fewer coupling term than originally proposed. We also describe the process of fitting a positive-semidefinite function to a new stylus at some specific excitation frequency.

Dimensional Reduction for 6D Vibrotactile Display.

The human hand detects high-frequency vibrations in all directions but cannot distinguish the direction, which suggests a multi-dimensional vibrotactile stimulus is haptically equivalent to some one-dimensional (1D) stimulus. In this article, we explore how a 6D vibrotactile stimulus rendered at the haptic interaction point (HIP) of a kinesthetic haptic interface, with the stylus held in a precision pen-hold grasp, is mapped to an equivalent 1D stimulus normalized by the detection threshold. We gather a large human-subjects data set in which we determine detection thresholds for 45 distinct combinations of three orthogonal forces and three orthogonal torques rendered at the HIP, at a single frequency of 108 Hz corresponding to the peak sensitivity in our prior study. Using this data set, we find a general quadratic weighting function to predict the 1D normalized stimulus for a given 6D vibrotactile stimulus. We find that including just seven (out of a possible 21) independent parameters in the symmetric weighting matrix is sufficient to capture the non-obvious coupling between forces and torques rendered at the HIP for dimensional reduction from 6D to 1D.

Discovery of 2,4-diarylaminopyrimidines bearing a resorcinol motif as novel ALK inhibitors to overcome the G1202R resistant mutation.

To address drug resistance caused by ALK kinase mutations, especially the most refractory and predominant mutation G1202R for the second-generation ALK inhibitor, a series of new diarylaminopyrimidine analogues were designed by incorporating a resorcinol moiety (A-ring) to interact the ALK kinase domain where the G1202R is located. Compound 12d turns out as the most potent with IC50 values of 1.7, 3.5, and 1.8 nM against ALK wild type, gatekeeper mutant L1196M, and the G1202R mutant, respectively. More importantly, compound 12d has excellent inhibitory effects against the proliferation of BaF3 cells specifically expressing ALK wild type, gatekeeper L1196M, and the most challenging mutant G1202R, with IC50 values all less than 1.5 nM. Collectively, compound 12d is worthy of further investigation as a new more potent third-generation ALK inhibitor to circumvent drug resistance of both the first-generation and the second-generation inhibitors.