Echocardiography

The book "Echocardiography - New Techniques" brings worldwide contributions from highly acclaimed clinical and imaging science investigators, and representatives from academic medical centers. Each chapter is designed and written to be accessible to those with a basic knowledge of echocardiography. Additionally, the chapters are meant to be stimulating and educational to the experts and investigators in the field of echocardiography. This book is aimed primarily at cardiology fellows on their basic echocardiography rotation, fellows in general internal medicine, radiology and emergency medicine, and experts in the arena of echocardiography. Over the last few decades, the rate of technological advancements has developed dramatically, resulting in new techniques and improved echocardiographic imaging. The authors of this book focused on presenting the most advanced techniques useful in today's research and in daily clinical practice. These advanced techniques are utilized in the detection of different cardiac pathologies in patients, in contributing to their clinical decision, as well as follow-up and outcome predictions. In addition to the advanced techniques covered, this book expounds upon several special pathologies with respect to the functions of echocardiography

Implementation of a Synchronized Oscillator Circuit for Fast Sensing and Labeling of Image Objects

We present an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) CMOS chip that implements a synchronized oscillator cellular neural network with a matrix size of 32 × 32 for object sensing and labeling in binary images. Networks of synchronized oscillators are a recently developed tool for image segmentation and analysis. Its parallel network operation is based on a “temporary correlation” theory that attempts to describe scene recognition as if performed by the human brain. The synchronized oscillations of neuron groups attract a person’s attention if he or she is focused on a coherent stimulus (image object). For more than one perceived stimulus, these synchronized patterns switch in time between different neuron groups, thus forming temporal maps that code several features of the analyzed scene. In this paper, a new oscillator circuit based on a mathematical model is proposed, and the network architecture and chip functional blocks are presented and discussed. The proposed chip is implemented in AMIS 0.35 μm C035M-D 5M/1P technology. An application of the proposed network chip for the segmentation of insulin-producing pancreatic islets in magnetic resonance liver images is presented

Quantification of tumour heterogenity in MRI

Cancer is the leading cause of death that touches us all, either directly or indirectly. It is estimated that the number of newly diagnosed cases in the Netherlands will increase to 123,000 by the year 2020. General Dutch statistics are similar to those in the UK, i.e. over the last ten years, the age-standardised incidence rate1 has stabilised at around 355 females and 415 males per 100,000. Figure 1 shows the cancer incidence per gender. In the UK, the rise in lifetime risk of cancer is more than one in three and depends on many factors, including age, lifestyle and genetic makeup

Radiofrequency catheter ablation in atrial arrhythmias : insight into pre-procedural evaluation and procedural guidance

Radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA) has become an important treatment option in the management of supraventricular arrhythmias such as atrioventricular (nodal) re-entry tachycardia, atrial tachycardia, atrial flutter and atrial fibrillation (AF). Particularly in the management of AF the number of RFCA procedures performed is growing rapidly. Three-dimensional electroanatomical mapping combined with non-invasive imaging is currently a state of the art technique to guide RFCA for complex arrhythmias such as AF ablation, providing information on anatomical landmarks and arrhythmogenic substrate with higher accuracy and with less radiation exposure than fluoroscopy or conventional catheter based mapping. Importantly, accurate characterization of the arrhythmogenic substrate and the underlying mechanisms of the arrhythmia as well as visualization of anatomical landmarks are pivotal to optimize the results of RFCA. Comprehensive pre-procedural evaluation may help to identify the appropriate substrate as well as to identify patients with a high likelihood to benefit from a RFCA procedure.Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, Biosense Webster, MSD, Toshiba medical systems and ABN-AMROUBL - phd migration 201

Pacing with restoration of respiratory sinus arrhythmia improved cardiac contractility and the left ventricular output: a translational study

Introduction: Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is a prognostic value for patients with heart failure and is defined as a beat-to-beat variation of the timing between the heart beats. Patients with heart failure or patients with permanent cardiac pacing might benefit from restoration of RSA. The aim of this translational, proof-of-principle study was to evaluate the effect of pacing with or without restored RSAon parameters of LV cardiac contractility and the cardiac output

Advances in Electrocardiograms

Electrocardiograms have become one of the most important, and widely used medical tools for diagnosing diseases such as cardiac arrhythmias, conduction disorders, electrolyte imbalances, hypertension, coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction. This book reviews recent advancements in electrocardiography. The four sections of this volume, Cardiac Arrhythmias, Myocardial Infarction, Autonomic Dysregulation and Cardiotoxicology, provide comprehensive reviews of advancements in the clinical applications of electrocardiograms. This book is replete with diagrams, recordings, flow diagrams and algorithms which demonstrate the possible future direction for applying electrocardiography to evaluating the development and progression of cardiac diseases. The chapters in this book describe a number of unique features of electrocardiograms in adult and pediatric patient populations with predilections for cardiac arrhythmias and other electrical abnormalities associated with hypertension, coronary artery disease, myocardial infarction, sleep apnea syndromes, pericarditides, cardiomyopathies and cardiotoxicities, as well as innovative interpretations of electrocardiograms during exercise testing and electrical pacing

Contributions à la segmentation d'image : phase locale et modèles statistiques

Ce document presente une synthèse de mes travaux apres these, principalement sur la problematique de la segmentation d’images

Diagnostic Significance of Exosomal miRNAs in the Plasma of Breast Cancer Patients

Poster Session AbstractsBackground and Aims: Emerging evidence that microRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in cancer development has opened up new opportunities for cancer diagnosis. Recent studies demonstrated that released exosomes which contain a subset of both cellular mRNA and miRNA could be a useful source of biomarkers for cancer detection. Here, we aim to develop a novel biomarker for breast cancer diagnosis using exosomal miRNAs in plasma. Methods: We have developed a rapid and novel isolation protocol to enrich tumor-associated exosomes from plasma samples by capturing tumor specific surface markers containing exosomes. After enrichment, we performed miRNA profiling on four sample sets; (1) Ep-CAM marker enriched plasma exosomes of breast cancer patients; (2) breast tumors of the same patients; (3) adjacent non-cancerous tissues of the same patients; (4) Ep-CAM marker enriched plasma exosomes of normal control subjects. Profiling is performed using PCR-based array with human microRNA panels that contain more than 700 miRNAs. Results: Our profiling data showed that 15 miRNAs are concordantly up-regulated and 13 miRNAs are concordantly down-regulated in both plasma exosomes and corresponding tumors. These account for 25% (up-regulation) and 15% (down-regulation) of all miRNAs detectable in plasma exosomes. Our findings demonstrate that miRNA profile in EpCAM-enriched plasma exosomes from breast cancer patients exhibit certain similar pattern to that in the corresponding tumors. Based on our profiling results, plasma signatures that differentiated breast cancer from control are generated and some of the well-known breast cancer related miRNAs such as miR-10b, miR-21, miR-155 and miR-145 are included in our panel list. The putative miRNA biomarkers are validated on plasma samples from an independent cohort from more than 100 cancer patients. Further validation of the selected markers is likely to offer an accurate, noninvasive and specific diagnostic assay for breast cancer. Conclusions: These results suggest that exosomal miRNAs in plasma may be a novel biomarker for breast cancer diagnosis.link_to_OA_fulltex