Associations of Dietary Anthocyanidins Intake with Bone Health in Children: A Cross-Sectional Study.

PURPOSE: Bone health and body composition share several common mechanisms like oxidative stress and inflammation. Anthocyanins have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. We have reported that anthocyanins are associated with better body composition in children, but the associations with bone health have not been elucidated. We aimed to explore the association of anthocyanins with bone mineral content (BMC) and bone mineral density (BMD) at multiple sites in children. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 452 Chinese children aged 6-9 years were recruited. A validated 79-item food frequency questionnaire was used to collect dietary information. BMC and BMD at multiple sites (whole body; whole body excluding head, WBEH; limbs; arms; legs) were measured by dual-energy X-ray. RESULTS: Higher dietary intake of total anthocyanidins (per one standard deviation increase) was associated with a 1.28-13.6 g (1.31-1.60%, compared to median) higher BMC at all sites and a 3.61-6.96 mg (0.65-0.90%) higher BMD at the whole body, WBEH, and arm sites after controlling for a number of possible covariates. The results were similar and more pronounced for cyanidin, but not for delphinidin and peonidin. Higher dietary intake of cyanidin (per one standard deviation increase) was associated with a 1.33-15.4 g (1.48-1.68%) higher BMC at all sites and a 4.15-7.77 mg (0.66-1.00%) higher BMD at all sites except the legs. No statistically significant associations with BMC or BMD were found for dietary intake of delphinidin and peonidin. CONCLUSIONS: Higher dietary intake of total anthocyanidins and cyanidins were associated with higher BMC and BMD in Chinese children.

[A probability model for analyzing speckles in intravascular ultrasound images to facilitate image segmentation].

OBJECTIVE: Ultrasonic image speckles result from the interference of the reflected signals by the scatters in the detected tissue. The physical characteristics of the speckles are closely correlated with the structures of the biological tissues, and the probability distribution of these speckles differs across different tissues. Based on the probability characteristics of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) speckles, a Gamma mixture model and Gaussian mixture model are proposed to describe the calcified plaque, soft plaque and normal vascular regions on IVUS images. Using KS test, KL divergence and correlation coefficient analysis, we found that the probability distributions of the speckles generated by calcified plaques and normal blood vessels were better described by the Gaussian mixture model, while the speckles caused by soft plaques were described better by the Gamma mixture model. Based on this finding, we propose a probability mixture model combining neighborhood information for plaque segmentation on IVUS images. Compared with the existing probabilistic mixture model, the segmentation accuracy was greatly improved with a reduced noise.