Automated detection and segmentation of non-small cell lung cancer computed tomography images.

peer reviewedDetection and segmentation of abnormalities on medical images is highly important for patient management including diagnosis, radiotherapy, response evaluation, as well as for quantitative image research. We present a fully automated pipeline for the detection and volumetric segmentation of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) developed and validated on 1328 thoracic CT scans from 8 institutions. Along with quantitative performance detailed by image slice thickness, tumor size, image interpretation difficulty, and tumor location, we report an in-silico prospective clinical trial, where we show that the proposed method is faster and more reproducible compared to the experts. Moreover, we demonstrate that on average, radiologists & radiation oncologists preferred automatic segmentations in 56% of the cases. Additionally, we evaluate the prognostic power of the automatic contours by applying RECIST criteria and measuring the tumor volumes. Segmentations by our method stratified patients into low and high survival groups with higher significance compared to those methods based on manual contours

Hand osteoarthritis: clinical phenotypes, molecular mechanisms and disease management

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a highly prevalent condition and the hand is the most commonly affected site. Patients with hand OA frequently report symptoms of pain, functional limitations, and frustration in undertaking everyday activities. The condition presents clinically with changes to the bone, ligaments, cartilage and synovial tissue, which can be observed using radiography, ultrasonography or MRI. Hand OA is a heterogeneous disorder and is considered to be multifactorial in aetiology. This review provides an overview of the epidemiology, presentation and burden of hand OA, including an update on hand OA imaging (including the development of novel techniques), disease mechanisms and management. In particular, areas for which new evidence has substantially changed the way we understand, consider and treat hand OA are highlighted. For example, genetic studies, clinical trials and careful prospective imaging studies from the past 5 years are beginning to provide insights into the pathogenesis of hand OA that might uncover new therapeutic targets in disease

Kërkime arkeologjike në zonën e Vlorës - 2012

Xhyheri Suela, Muçaj Skënder, Halilaj E., Sheremetaj L. Kërkime arkeologjike në zonën e Vlorës - 2012. In: Iliria, vol. 37, 2013. pp. 437-458

Gender and Age Distribution of Thyroid Nodules using Imaging Diagnostic and Management Modalities in Albania; Our data

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate gender and age distribution and the importance of imaging modalities in the evaluation and management of thyroid nodular disease in Albania nowadays. Material and method: The study analyzed the results of 310 patients (N=257 women; N=53 men), assessed at U. O. Clinic, American Hospital and Hygiea Hospital, Tirana, Albania during one year period; May 2015 – May 2016. The average age in the sample was 45.6 years. Thyroid nodules were found in 221 cases (185 females and 36 males). The patients had a standard ultrasound (US) of the thyroid; scintigraphy (SC) and ultrasound-guide fine needle aspiration biopsy (US-FNAB) when indicated. Results: The study shows that nodular disease of the thyroid was found in 84 % of women patients, and in 16 % of men patients. The largest presence of nodules was at the age group of 41-49 years. Moreover, this survey showed that ultrasound can help to distinguish nodules that are definitely benign and those with suspicious features that may require further investigation under FNAB. Some statistically significant connections were found between ultrasound characteristics and FNAB. Conclusion: Females were vast majority of patients as in regards of gender with 84 % of total sample population in the study of 310 subjects. And group age of 41-49 years old were more affected. Ultrasound and other imaging modalities are reliable methods for diagnosis and management of thyroid nodules, including patients' selection to undergo through FNAB. SC was indicated to evaluate the functional features of a nodule, especially in the presence of a low TSH value. In Albania these modalities are now used by many trained medical staff thus offering quality medical service to our patients over all. Keywords: Thyroid nodule, malignant, ultrasound, FNAB DOI: 10.7176/ALST/92-04 Publication date: February 28th 202

Proactive prevention of false-positive conflicts in distributed ontology development

A Version Control System (VCS) is usually required for successful ontology development in distributed settings. VCSs enable the tracking and propagation of ontology changes, as well as collecting metadata to describe changes, e.g., who made a change at which point in time. Modern VCSs implement an optimistic approach that allows for simultaneous changes of the same artifact and provides mechanisms for automatic as well as manual conflict resolution. However, different ontology development tools serialize the ontology artifacts in different ways. As a consequence, existing VCSs may identify a huge number of false-positive conflicts during the merging process, i.e., conflicts that do not result from ontology changes but the fact that two ontology versions are differently serialized. Following the principle of prevention is better than cure, we designed SerVCS, an approach that enhances VCSs to cope with different serializations of the same ontology. SerVCS is based on a unique serializa tion of ontologies to reduce the number of false-positive conflicts produced whenever different serializations of the same ontology are compared. We implemented SerVCS on top of Git, utilizing tools such as Rapper and Rdf-toolkit for syntax validation and unique serialization, respectively. We have conducted an empirical evaluation to determine the conflict detection accuracy of SerVCS whenever simultaneous changes to an ontology are performed using different ontology editors. The evaluation results suggest that SerVCS empowers VCSs by preventing them from wrongly identifying serialization related conflicts

Alligator: A deductive approach for the integration of industry 4.0 standards

Industry 4.0 standards, such as AutomationML, are used to specify properties of mechatronic elements in terms of views, such as electrical and mechanical views of a motor engine. These views have to be integrated in order to obtain a complete model of the artifact. Currently, the integration requires user knowledge to manually identify elements in the views that refer to the same element in the integrated model. Existing approaches are not able to scale up to large models where a potentially large number of conflicts may exist across the different views of an element. To overcome this limitation, we developed Alligator, a deductive rule-based system able to identify conflicts between AutomationML documents. We define a Datalog-based representation of the AutomationML input documents, and a set of rules for identifying conflicts. A deductive engine is used to resolve the conflicts, to merge the input documents and produce an integrated AutomationML document. Our empirica l evaluation of the quality of Alligator against a benchmark of AutomationML documents suggest that Alligator accurately identifies various types of conflicts between AutomationML documents, and thus helps increasing the scalability, efficiency, and coherence of models for Industry 4.0 manufacturing environments