past present and future ultrasonographic techniques for analyzing ovarian masses

Ultrasonography is today the method of choice for distinguishing between benign and malignant adnexal pathologies. Using pattern recognition several types of tumors can be recognized according to their characteristic appearance on gray-scale imaging. Color Doppler imaging should be used only to perform a semiquantitative color score or evaluate the flow location. International Ovarian Tumor Analysis group had standardized definitions characterizing adnexal masses and suggested the use of 'simple rules' in premenopausal women. Recently, the use of 3D vascular indices has been proposed but its potential use in clinical practice is debated. Also computerized aided diagnosis algorithms showed encouraging results to be confirmed in the future

Overview of ImageCLEF 2018: Challenges, Datasets and Evaluation

This paper presents an overview of the ImageCLEF 2018 evaluation campaign, an event that was organized as part of the CLEF (Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum) Labs 2018. ImageCLEF is an ongoing initiative (it started in 2003) that promotes the evaluation of technologies for annotation, indexing and retrieval with the aim of providing information access to collections of images in various usage scenarios and domains. In 2018, the 16th edition of ImageCLEF ran three main tasks and a pilot task: (1) a caption prediction task that aims at predicting the caption of a figure from the biomedical literature based only on the figure image; (2) a tuberculosis task that aims at detecting the tuberculosis type, severity and drug resistance from CT (Computed Tomography) volumes of the lung; (3) a LifeLog task (videos, images and other sources) about daily activities understanding and moment retrieval, and (4) a pilot task on visual question answering where systems are tasked with answering medical questions. The strong participation, with over 100 research groups registering and 31 submitting results for the tasks, shows an increasing interest in this benchmarking campaign

ImageCLEF 2019: Multimedia Retrieval in Lifelogging, Medical, Nature, and Security Applications

This paper presents an overview of the foreseen ImageCLEF 2019 lab that will be organized as part of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum - CLEF Labs 2019. ImageCLEF is an ongoing evaluation initiative (started in 2003) that promotes the evaluation of technologies for annotation, indexing and retrieval of visual data with the aim of providing information access to large collections of images in various usage scenarios and domains. In 2019, the 17th edition of ImageCLEF will run four main tasks: (i) a Lifelog task (videos, images and other sources) about daily activities understanding, retrieval and summarization, (ii) a Medical task that groups three previous tasks (caption analysis, tuberculosis prediction, and medical visual question answering) with newer data, (iii) a new Coral task about segmenting and labeling collections of coral images for 3D modeling, and (iv) a new Security task addressing the problems of automatically identifying forged content and retrieve hidden information. The strong participation, with over 100 research groups registering and 31 submitting results for the tasks in 2018 shows an important interest in this benchmarking campaign and we expect the new tasks to attract at least as many researchers for 2019

ImageCLEF 2020: Multimedia Retrieval in Lifelogging, Medical, Nature, and Security Applications

This paper presents an overview of the 2020 ImageCLEF lab that will be organized as part of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum - CLEF Labs 2020 in Thessaloniki, Greece. ImageCLEF is an ongoing evaluation initiative (run since 2003) that promotes the evaluation of technologies for annotation, indexing and retrieval of visual data with the aim of providing information access to large collections of images in various usage scenarios and domains. In 2020, the 18th edition of ImageCLEF will organize four main tasks: (i) a Lifelog task (videos, images and other sources) about daily activity understanding, retrieval and summarization, (ii) a Medical task that groups three previous tasks (caption analysis, tuberculosis prediction, and medical visual question answering) with new data and adapted tasks, (iii) a Coral task about segmenting and labeling collections of coral images for 3D modeling, and a new (iv) Web user interface task addressing the problems of detecting and recognizing hand drawn website UIs (User Interfaces) for generating automatic code. The strong participation, with over 235 research groups registering and 63 submitting over 359 runs for the tasks in 2019 shows an important interest in this benchmarking campaign. We expect the new tasks to attract at least as many researchers for 2020

In search of morphological modules: a systematic review

Morphological modularity arises in complex living beings due to a semi-independent inheritance, development, and function of body parts. Modularity helps us to understand the evolvability and plasticity of organismal form, and how morphological variation is structured during evolution and development. For this reason, delimiting morphological modules and establishing the factors involved in their origins is a lively field of inquiry in biology today. Although it is thought that modularity is pervasive in all living beings, actually we do not know how often modularity is present in different morphological systems. We also do not know whether some methodological approaches tend to reveal modular patterns more easily than others, or whether some factors are more related to the formation of modules or the integration of the whole phenotype. This systematic review seeks to answer these type of questions through an examination of research investigating morphological modularity from 1958 to present. More than 200 original research articles were gathered in order to reach a quantitative appraisal on what is studied, how it is studied, and how the results are explained. The results reveal an heterogeneous picture, where some taxa, systems, and approaches are over-studied, while others receive minor attention. Thus, this review points out various trends and gaps in the study of morphological modularity, offering a broad picture of current knowledge and where we can direct future research efforts

ImageCLEF 2019: Multimedia Retrieval in Medicine, Lifelogging, Security and Nature

This paper presents an overview of the ImageCLEF 2019 lab, organized as part of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum - CLEF Labs 2019. ImageCLEF is an ongoing evaluation initiative (started in 2003) that promotes the evaluation of technologies for annotation, indexing and retrieval of visual data with the aim of providing information access to large collections of images in various usage scenarios and domains. In 2019, the 17th edition of ImageCLEF runs four main tasks: (i) a medical task that groups three previous tasks (caption analysis, tuberculosis prediction, and medical visual question answering) with new data, (ii) a lifelog task (videos, images and other sources) about daily activities understanding, retrieval and summarization, (iii) a new security task addressing the problems of automatically identifying forged content and retrieve hidden information, and (iv) a new coral task about segmenting and labeling collections of coral images for 3D modeling. The strong participation, with 235 research groups registering, and 63 submitting over 359 runs, shows an important interest in this benchmark campaign

Widespread white matter microstructural differences in schizophrenia across 4322 individuals:Results from the ENIGMA Schizophrenia DTI Working Group

The regional distribution of white matter (WM) abnormalities in schizophrenia remains poorly understood, and reported disease effects on the brain vary widely between studies. In an effort to identify commonalities across studies, we perform what we believe is the first ever large-scale coordinated study of WM microstructural differences in schizophrenia. Our analysis consisted of 2359 healthy controls and 1963 schizophrenia patients from 29 independent international studies; we harmonized the processing and statistical analyses of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data across sites and meta-analyzed effects across studies. Significant reductions in fractional anisotropy (FA) in schizophrenia patients were widespread, and detected in 20 of 25 regions of interest within a WM skeleton representing all major WM fasciculi. Effect sizes varied by region, peaking at (d=0.42) for the entire WM skeleton, driven more by peripheral areas as opposed to the core WM where regions of interest were defined. The anterior corona radiata (d=0.40) and corpus callosum (d=0.39), specifically its body (d=0.39) and genu (d=0.37), showed greatest effects. Significant decreases, to lesser degrees, were observed in almost all regions analyzed. Larger effect sizes were observed for FA than diffusivity measures; significantly higher mean and radial diffusivity was observed for schizophrenia patients compared with controls. No significant effects of age at onset of schizophrenia or medication dosage were detected. As the largest coordinated analysis of WM differences in a psychiatric disorder to date, the present study provides a robust profile of widespread WM abnormalities in schizophrenia patients worldwide. Interactive three-dimensional visualization of the results is available at www.enigma-viewer.org.Molecular Psychiatry advance online publication, 17 October 2017; doi:10.1038/mp.2017.170

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

Multiancestry analysis of the HLA locus in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases uncovers a shared adaptive immune response mediated by HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes

Across multiancestry groups, we analyzed Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) associations in over 176,000 individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) versus controls. We demonstrate that the two diseases share the same protective association at the HLA locus. HLA-specific fine-mapping showed that hierarchical protective effects of HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes best accounted for the association, strongest with HLA-DRB1*04:04 and HLA-DRB1*04:07, and intermediary with HLA-DRB1*04:01 and HLA-DRB1*04:03. The same signal was associated with decreased neurofibrillary tangles in postmortem brains and was associated with reduced tau levels in cerebrospinal fluid and to a lower extent with increased Aβ42. Protective HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes strongly bound the aggregation-prone tau PHF6 sequence, however only when acetylated at a lysine (K311), a common posttranslational modification central to tau aggregation. An HLA-DRB1*04-mediated adaptive immune response decreases PD and AD risks, potentially by acting against tau, offering the possibility of therapeutic avenues

Analisi del processo di Accreditamento JACIE del Programma Trapianti Businco

Introduzione: Il Programma Trapianti Businco dal gennaio 2010 ha iniziato un processo di Accreditamento secondo gli standard JACIE. Il processo è stato analizzato con uno studio quantitativo di tipo descrittivo-esplorativo, al fine di valutare l'ipotesi secondo la quale gli standard JACIE migliorano le performance degli operatori e gli output dell'organizzazione. Materiali e metodi: Prima di iniziare il processo è stata effettuata un'analisi organizzativa. Lo scopo dello studio è quello di descrivere e analizzare il processo nelle diverse fasi, la pianificazione, la programmazione e l'implementazione. L'analisi dei dati si concentra sui cambiamenti organizzativi e strutturali, la formazione e la preparazione della documentazione, l'implementazione e la verifica del raggiungimento degli obiettivi. I dati si riferiscono al periodo compreso tra gennaio 2010 e ottobre 2012. Risultati: è stato creato un quality team, definito l'organigramma, elaborata la mappa dei processi e definiti i processi stessi prima di elaborare la documentazione. È stato implementato un Sistema di Gestione della Qualití  che ha incluso la gestione del rischio, gli audit e l'identificazione d'indicatori di qualití . Conclusioni: nonostante le difficoltí  nell'attuazione del processo di Accreditamento JACIE è stato essenziale per l'integrazione e la collaborazione multi-professionale. Anche la formazione del personale ha svolto un ruolo chiave nella realizzazione di tutto il sistema ed in particolare per il Sistema di Gestione della Qualití .Keywords: Accreditation, JACIEAnalysis of the accreditation process JACIE Transplant Program BusincoABSTRACT Introduction: The Businco Transplant Program undertook the JACIE standards accreditation process since January 2010. The process is here analyzed by a descriptive-exploratory quantitative study to verify the hypothesis that accreditation according to the standard JACIE improves health professionals performance and organization output. Method: An analysis was performed before starting the whole process. An analysis of the planning, programming and implementation of actions was carried out. Data analysis focuses on the organizational and structural changes, training, and preparation of documentation, implementation and verification of objectives achievement. The data refer to the period between January 2010 and October 2012. Results: A dedicated team was set up, an implementation plan and process map was developed. A Quality Management System was also implemented. This included: risk management, audit and quality indicators. Conclusions: Despite the difficulties the JACIE accreditation process has been useful for integration and professional collaboration. Education of the staff has played a key role in the implementation of the whole system and in particular for the quality management system.Keywords: Accreditation, JACI