Histological Evaluation of Corneal Scar Formation in Pseudophakic Bullous Keratopathy

PURPOSE: To evaluate histological changes in the corneal stroma in pseudophakic bullous keratopathy. METHODS: Twenty-eight patients (28 eyes) with pseudophakic bullous keratopathy underwent therapeutic penetrating keratoplasty at Shandong Eye Institute between January 2006 and November 2011. The patients were divided into two groups according to the duration of bullous keratopathy (<1.0 year group or >1.0 year group), and three buttons from enucleated eyes with choroidal melanoma served as a control. In vivo confocal microscopy examination, hematoxylin-eosin, Masson's trichrome stain and Van Gieson staining were used for microscopic examination. The histological evaluation and scoring of the buttons for morphological changes, including the degree of stromal scars, neovascularization and inflammatory cells within the corneal buttons, were compared. To study the underlying mechanism, connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) and TGF-β immunohistochemistry were performed. RESULTS: Confocal microscopy examination and histological evaluation and scoring of the buttons showed that compared with the <1.0 year group, stromal scars, neovascularization and inflammatory cells were more severe in the >1.0 year group (P<0.05). There was an increase in CTGF- and TGF-β1-positive stromal cells in the >1.0 year group. CONCLUSIONS: During the progression of pseudophakic bullous keratopathy, stromal scars occurred more often in the patients that had a longer duration of disease. Cytokines such as CTGF and TGF-β1 may play a role in this pathological process and deserve further investigation

Predicting Eye Fixations on Complex Visual Stimuli Using Local Symmetry

Most bottom-up models that predict human eye fixations are based on contrast features. The saliency model of Itti, Koch and Niebur is an example of such contrast-saliency models. Although the model has been successfully compared to human eye fixations, we show that it lacks preciseness in the prediction of fixations on mirror-symmetrical forms. The contrast model gives high response at the borders, whereas human observers consistently look at the symmetrical center of these forms. We propose a saliency model that predicts eye fixations using local mirror symmetry. To test the model, we performed an eye-tracking experiment with participants viewing complex photographic images and compared the data with our symmetry model and the contrast model. The results show that our symmetry model predicts human eye fixations significantly better on a wide variety of images including many that are not selected for their symmetrical content. Moreover, our results show that especially early fixations are on highly symmetrical areas of the images. We conclude that symmetry is a strong predictor of human eye fixations and that it can be used as a predictor of the order of fixation

Search for neutral MSSM Higgs bosons decaying to a pair of tau leptons in pp collisions

Peer reviewe

Measurement of top quark–antiquark pair production in association with a W or Z boson in pp collisions at √s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Searches for electroweak production of charginos, neutralinos, and sleptons decaying to leptons and W, Z, and Higgs bosons in pp collisions at 8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Study of hadronic event-shape variables in multijet final states in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

Peer reviewe

Measurement of prompt J/ψ pair production in pp collisions at √s = 7 Tev

Peer reviewe

Constraints on parton distribution functions and extraction of the strong coupling constant from the inclusive jet cross section in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

Peer reviewe