Vision-based retargeting for endoscopic navigation

Endoscopy is a standard procedure for visualising the human gastrointestinal tract. With the advances in biophotonics, imaging techniques such as narrow band imaging, confocal laser endomicroscopy, and optical coherence tomography can be combined with normal endoscopy for assisting the early diagnosis of diseases, such as cancer. In the past decade, optical biopsy has emerged to be an effective tool for tissue analysis, allowing in vivo and in situ assessment of pathological sites with real-time feature-enhanced microscopic images. However, the non-invasive nature of optical biopsy leads to an intra-examination retargeting problem, which is associated with the difficulty of re-localising a biopsied site consistently throughout the whole examination. In addition to intra-examination retargeting, retargeting of a pathological site is even more challenging across examinations, due to tissue deformation and changing tissue morphologies and appearances. The purpose of this thesis is to address both the intra- and inter-examination retargeting problems associated with optical biopsy. We propose a novel vision-based framework for intra-examination retargeting. The proposed framework is based on combining visual tracking and detection with online learning of the appearance of the biopsied site. Furthermore, a novel cascaded detection approach based on random forests and structured support vector machines is developed to achieve efficient retargeting. To cater for reliable inter-examination retargeting, the solution provided in this thesis is achieved by solving an image retrieval problem, for which an online scene association approach is proposed to summarise an endoscopic video collected in the first examination into distinctive scenes. A hashing-based approach is then used to learn the intrinsic representations of these scenes, such that retargeting can be achieved in subsequent examinations by retrieving the relevant images using the learnt representations. For performance evaluation of the proposed frameworks, extensive phantom, ex vivo and in vivo experiments have been conducted, with results demonstrating the robustness and potential clinical values of the methods proposed.Open Acces

Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer is one of the commonest cancers affecting individuals across the world. An improvement in survival has been attributed to multidisciplinary management, better diagnostics, improved surgical options for the primary and metastatic disease and advances in adjuvant therapy. In this book, international experts share their experience and knowledge on these different aspects in the management of colorectal cancer. An in depth analysis of screening for colorectal cancer, detailed evaluation of diagnostic modalities in staging colorectal cancer, recent advances in adjuvant therapy and principles and trends in the surgical management of colorectal cancer is provided. This will certainly prove to be an interesting and informative read for any clinician involved in the management of patients with colorectal cancer

Colorectal Cancer

The projections for future growth in the number of new patients with colorectal cancer in most parts of the world remain unfavorable. When we consider the substantial morbidity and mortality that accompanies the disease, the acute need for improvements and better solutions in patient care becomes evident. This volume, organized in five sections, represents a synopsis of the significant efforts from scientists, clinicians and investigators towards finding improvements in different patient care aspects including nutrition, diagnostic approaches, treatment strategies with the addition of some novel therapeutic approaches, and prevention. For scientists involved in investigations that explore fundamental cellular events in colorectal cancer, this volume provides a framework for translational integration of cell biological and clinical information. Clinicians as well as other healthcare professionals involved in patient management for colorectal cancer will find this volume useful

22nd EAA Congress – 15th ISGA Congress – 5th International Conference of Evolutionary Medicine

This Abstract book covers material of the Joint International Meeting: 22nd EAA Congress, 15th ISGA Congress, 5th International Conference of Evolutionary Medicine. This event was organized at Vilnius University (Lithuania) in 2022 on August 24-27th in a hybrid way, which brought together 28 famous keynote speakers from Austria, Great Britain, the USA, Australia, Croatia, Poland, France, Switzerland, Germany and other countries. This book includes the abstracts of more than 180 presentations. The main theme of the 22nd Congress of EAA (European Anthropology Association) is Human variation and adaptation in a changing world with a particular focus on physical, biopsychosocial and general health changes in the human body. The topics of the 15th Congress of ISGA (International Society for the Study of Human Growth and Clinical Auxology) expand our understanding of human growth and development in health and disease. Special attention is paid to human growth in the period of early ontogenesis, to environmental factors affecting growth (including growth in war and other stressful conditions), children and adolescents’ nutrition and body composition, also modern analyses of growth data. The 5th International Conference on Evolutionary Medicine expands an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the diversity of human health and disease, sharing research from different fields to cooperate together in order to understand the mechanisms of different disease from the evolutionary point of view. The Abstract Book of this joint international event should not only be interesting to scientists of various scientific fields such as anthropology, human biology, public health, and health education, but also to clinical doctors, especially neonatologists, paediatricians, family practitioners and many others. Organisers believe that knowledge of the potential of human adaptation and evolutionary mechanisms in maintaining the health and wellbeing of our species will encourage fruitful interdisciplinary discussions in medical society as well as among biologists, sociologists and other specialists

Variants of Significance? The Production and Management of Genetic Risk for Breast and Ovarian Cancer in the Era of Multi-Gene Panel Testing

This dissertation examines the production and management of genetic risk for breast and ovarian cancer in the United States in the new era of multi-gene panel testing. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with genetics health professionals and women with mutations, this project is the first social science study to examine how breast and ovarian cancer genetic risk is constructed and managed among women with variants of uncertain significance or moderate-risk mutations. Moving beyond an individual-level focus on women’s risk management decisions, this project instead explores how the structures, practices, and organization of genetic medicine constrain and enable those decisions. There are four key findings from this study. First, the adoption of panel testing has shifted the boundaries of risk, disease, and patienthood and contributed to a spectrum of medicalization of breast and ovarian cancer risk. Women with high-risk breast and ovarian cancer mutations are now typically viewed and treated like full patients with a "disease," while women with moderate-risk mutations occupy a liminal space of qualified patienthood. Second, the structures and organization of genetic medicine in the United States point women with breast and ovarian cancer mutations toward risk-reducing mastectomy and breast reconstruction and encourage choosing those surgical responses over breast surveillance or staying flat. Mastectomy has become the standard “treatment” for the “disease” of genetic risk for breast cancer, regardless of whether women have high- or moderate-risk mutations and despite more conservative recommendations in clinical guidelines. Third, the structures of genetic medicine and the contemporary gender order in the United States are mutually constituted and co-produced. Breast reconstruction and gynecologic surgery practices both emerge from and reinforce gendered social and cultural norms that prioritize women's appearance and their reproductive capacity over their embodied experiences and daily quality of life. Finally, the discourses and practices of genetic medicine leave many women un- or under-prepared for the duration and severity of the side effects and consequences associated with breast reconstruction and risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy. By closely examining the social and structural dimensions of how cancer genetic risk is produced and managed in the United States, this project illuminates how clinical practices that magnify and focus on reducing certain risks simultaneously obscure and generate exposure to others