Oral health conditions in an Albanian adolescent population: An epidemiological study

The aim of this study was to determine the oral health conditions of an adolescent population of Tirana

Lazy Luna: extendible software for multilevel reader comparison in cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) imaging is a growing field with increasing diagnostic utility in clinical routine. Quantitative diagnostic parameters are typically calculated based on contours or points provided by readers, e.g. natural intelligences (NI) such as clinicians or researchers, and artificial intelligences (AI). As clinical applications multiply, evaluating the precision and reproducibility of quantitative parameters becomes increasingly important. Although segmentation challenges for AIs and guidelines for clinicians provide quality assessments and regulation, the methods ought to be combined and streamlined for clinical applications. The goal of the developed software, Lazy Luna (LL), is to offer a flexible evaluation tool that is readily extendible to new sequences and scientific endeavours. METHODS: An interface was designed for LL, which allows for comparing annotated CMR images. Geometric objects ensure precise calculations of metric values and clinical results regardless of whether annotations originate from AIs or NIs. A graphical user interface (GUI) is provided to make the software available to non-programmers. The GUI allows for an interactive inspection of image datasets as well as implementing tracing procedures, which follow statistical reader differences in clinical results to their origins in individual image contours. The backend software builds on a set of meta-classes, which can be extended to new imaging sequences and clinical parameters. Following an agile development procedure with clinical feedback allows for a quick implementation of new classes, figures and tables for evaluation. RESULTS: Two application cases present LL's extendibility to clinical evaluation and AI development contexts. The first concerns T1 parametric mapping images segmented by two expert readers. Quantitative result differences are traced to reveal typical segmentation dissimilarities from which these differences originate. The meta-classes are extended to this new application scenario. The second applies to the open source Late Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE) quantification challenge for AI developers “Emidec”, which illustrates LL's usability as open source software. CONCLUSION: The presented software Lazy Luna allows for an automated multilevel comparison of readers as well as identifying qualitative reasons for statistical reader differences. The open source software LL can be extended to new application cases in the future

Introduction of Lazy Luna an automatic software-driven multilevel comparison of ventricular function quantification in cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging is the gold standard for cardiac function assessment. Quantification of clinical results (CR) requires precise segmentation. Clinicians statistically compare CRs to ensure reproducibility. Convolutional Neural Network developers compare their results via metrics. Aim: Introducing software capable of automatic multilevel comparison. A multilevel analysis covering segmentations and CRs builds on a generic software backend. Metrics and CRs are calculated with geometric accuracy. Segmentations and CRs are connected to track errors and their effects. An interactive GUI makes the software accessible to different users. The software's multilevel comparison was tested on a use case based on cardiac function assessment. The software shows good reader agreement in CRs and segmentation metrics (Dice > 90%). Decomposing differences by cardiac position revealed excellent agreement in midventricular slices: > 90% but poorer segmentations in apical (> 71%) and basal slices (> 74%). Further decomposition by contour type locates the largest millilitre differences in the basal right cavity (> 3 ml). Visual inspection shows these differences being caused by different basal slice choices. The software illuminated reader differences on several levels. Producing spreadsheets and figures concerning metric values and CR differences was automated. A multilevel reader comparison is feasible and extendable to other cardiac structures in the future

Public Access to Information in the EU: the Role of Control and Trust

Public access to documents is one the European Union’s oldest and strongest policy efforts to connect with its citizens. Yet, the revision of Regulation 1049/01 has been stuck in the pipeline for more than seven years. The stalemate of the reform is also due to the debate evolving around similar arguments and disagreements on specific provisions losing sight of the overall goal of public access. We pick up on the undercurrent in the debate: the reasons for the necessity of transparency and their varied relevance for the concrete legal revision. We also put forward a reason often invoked but seldom scientifically developed for transparency: public trust. This paper focuses on ‘control’ and ‘trust’ as two primary reasons for transparency and maps their conceptual background and implications. We treat these two approaches in a stylized and typified way, so as to better comprehend the core of the matter. We point out to the differences and practical overlaps of the public access to documents regime from these perspectives. By doing so, the paper attempts to introduce more innovative thinking about the modalities of access to documents and their linkage with deeper conceptual understandings on the relation between citizens and public institutions. With this theoretical contribution we hope to provide new ground for debating proposals for reform