Topology-Aware Loss for Aorta and Great Vessel Segmentation in Computed Tomography Images

Segmentation networks are not explicitly imposed to learn global invariants of an image, such as the shape of an object and the geometry between multiple objects, when they are trained with a standard loss function. On the other hand, incorporating such invariants into network training may help improve performance for various segmentation tasks when they are the intrinsic characteristics of the objects to be segmented. One example is segmentation of aorta and great vessels in computed tomography (CT) images where vessels are found in a particular geometry in the body due to the human anatomy and they mostly seem as round objects on a 2D CT image. This paper addresses this issue by introducing a new topology-aware loss function that penalizes topology dissimilarities between the ground truth and prediction through persistent homology. Different from the previously suggested segmentation network designs, which apply the threshold filtration on a likelihood function of the prediction map and the Betti numbers of the ground truth, this paper proposes to apply the Vietoris-Rips filtration to obtain persistence diagrams of both ground truth and prediction maps and calculate the dissimilarity with the Wasserstein distance between the corresponding persistence diagrams. The use of this filtration has advantage of modeling shape and geometry at the same time, which may not happen when the threshold filtration is applied. Our experiments on 4327 CT images of 24 subjects reveal that the proposed topology-aware loss function leads to better results than its counterparts, indicating the effectiveness of this use

Recognition of Face and Emotional Facial Expressions in Autism

Autism is a genetically transferred neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by severe and permanent deficits in many interpersonal relation areas like communication, social interaction and emotional responsiveness. Patients with autism have deficits in face recognition, eye contact and recognition of emotional expression. Both recognition of face and expression of facial emotion carried on face processing. Structural and functional impairment in fusiform gyrus, amygdala, superior temporal sulcus and other brain regions lead to deficits in recognition of face and facial emotion. Therefore studies suggest that face processing deficits resulted in problems in areas of social interaction and emotion in autism. Studies revealed that children with autism had problems in recognition of facial expression and used mouth region more than eye region. It was also shown that autistic patients interpreted ambiguous expressions as negative emotion. In autism, deficits related in various stages of face processing like detection of gaze, face identity, recognition of emotional expression were determined, so far. Social interaction impairments in autistic spectrum disorders originated from face processing deficits during the periods of infancy, childhood and adolescence. Recognition of face and expression of facial emotion could be affected either automatically by orienting towards faces after birth, or by “learning” processes in developmental periods such as identity and emotion processing. This article aimed to review neurobiological basis of face processing and recognition of emotional facial expressions during normal development and in autism

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors for Treatment of Selective Mutism

Some authors suggest that selective mutism should be considered as a variant of social phobia or a disorder in the obsessive-compulsive spectrum. Recent studies indicate that pharmacological treatments may be effective in the treatment of selective mutism. In this article, four cases who were treated with citalopram and escitalopram are presented. The results indicate that the drugs were well tolerated, and the level of social and verbal interactions improved significantly. These findings have shown that citalopram and escitalopram can be considered in medication of selective mutism; nevertheless, it is essential that research be done with more cases than previous ones, in order to prove their accurac

The Effect of Circumcision on the Mental Health of Children: A Review

Circumcision is one of the oldest and most frequently performed surgical procedures in the world. It is thought that the beginning of the male circumcision dates back to the earliest times of history. Approximately 13.3 million boys and 2 million girls undergo circumcision each year. In western societies, circumcision is usually performed in infancy while in other parts of the world, it is performed at different developmental stages. Each year in Turkey, especially during the summer months, thousands of children undergo circumcision. The motivations for circumcision include medical-therapeutic, preventive-hygienic and cultural reasons. Numerous publications have suggested that circumcision has serious traumatic effects on children's mental health. Studies conducted in Turkey draw attention to the positive meanings attributed to the circumcision in the community and emphasize that social effects limit the negative effects of circumcision. Although there are many publications in foreign literature about the mental effects of the circumcision on children's mental health, there are only a few studies in Turkey about the mental effects of the one of the most frequently performed surgical procedures in our country. The aim of this study is to review this issue. The articles related to circumcision were searched by keywords in Pubmed, Med line, EBSCHOHost, PsycINFO, Turkish Med line, Cukurova Index Database and in Google Scholar and those appropriate for this review were used by authors

Recognition of Face and Emotional Facial Expressions in Autism

Autism is a genetically transferred neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by severe and permanent deficits in many interpersonal relation areas like communication, social interaction and emotional responsiveness. Patients with autism have deficits in face recognition, eye contact and recognition of emotional expression. Both recognition of face and expression of facial emotion carried on face processing. Structural and functional impairment in fusiform gyrus, amygdala, superior temporal sulcus and other brain regions lead to deficits in recognition of face and facial emotion. Therefore studies suggest that face processing deficits resulted in problems in areas of social interaction and emotion in autism. Studies revealed that children with autism had problems in recognition of facial expression and used mouth region more than eye region. It was also shown that autistic patients interpreted ambiguous expressions as negative emotion. In autism, deficits related in various stages of face processing like detection of gaze, face identity, recognition of emotional expression were determined, so far. Social interaction impairments in autistic spectrum disorders originated from face processing deficits during the periods of infancy, childhood and adolescence. Recognition of face and expression of facial emotion could be affected either automatically by orienting towards faces after birth, or by “learning” processes in developmental periods such as identity and emotion processing. This article aimed to review neurobiological basis of face processing and recognition of emotional facial expressions during normal development and in autism

Psychiatric assessment of children with nonsyndromic cleft lip and palate

Objective: The aim of the study was to determine whether children with nonsyndromic cleft lip and palate (NSCLP) are more likely to be diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and whether cleft-related factors are related to psychopathology

Depression and anxiety levels and self-concept characteristics of adolescents with congenital complete visual impairment

Objective: Previous studies have reported that visual impairment can affect the mental health of children and adolescents. The aim of this study is to investigate the depression and anxiety levels and the self-concept characteristics of adolescents with congenital complete visual impairment

Psychiatric disorders and their association with burn-related factors in children with burn injury

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to assess psychiatric disorders and their association with burn-related factors in a population of Turkish children with burns