Successful Use of Squeezed-Fat Grafts to Correct a Breast Affected by Poland Syndrome

This study attempted to reconstruct deformities of a Poland syndrome patient using autologous fat tissues. All injected fat tissues were condensed by squeezing centrifugation. Operations were performed four times with intervals over 6 months. The total injection volume was 972 ml, and the maintained volume of 628 ml was measured by means of a magnetic resonance image (MRI). The entire follow-up period was 4.5 years. After surgery, several small cysts and minimal calcifications were present but no significant complications. The cosmetic outcomes and volume maintenance rates were excellent despite the overlapped large-volume injections. In conclusion, higher condensation of fat tissues through squeezing centrifugation would help to achieve better results in volume maintenance and reduce complications. It is necessary, however, to perform more comparative studies with many clinical cases for a more scientific analysis. The study experiments with squeezed fat simply suggest a hypothesis that squeezing centrifugation could select healthier cells through pressure disruption of relatively thinner membranes of larger, more vulnerable and more mature fat cells

CoNIC Challenge: Pushing the Frontiers of Nuclear Detection, Segmentation, Classification and Counting

Nuclear detection, segmentation and morphometric profiling are essential in helping us further understand the relationship between histology and patient outcome. To drive innovation in this area, we setup a community-wide challenge using the largest available dataset of its kind to assess nuclear segmentation and cellular composition. Our challenge, named CoNIC, stimulated the development of reproducible algorithms for cellular recognition with real-time result inspection on public leaderboards. We conducted an extensive post-challenge analysis based on the top-performing models using 1,658 whole-slide images of colon tissue. With around 700 million detected nuclei per model, associated features were used for dysplasia grading and survival analysis, where we demonstrated that the challenge's improvement over the previous state-of-the-art led to significant boosts in downstream performance. Our findings also suggest that eosinophils and neutrophils play an important role in the tumour microevironment. We release challenge models and WSI-level results to foster the development of further methods for biomarker discovery

Evaluation of an automated connective tissue disease screening assay in Korean patients with systemic rheumatic diseases

<div><p>This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic utilities of the automated connective tissues disease screening assay, CTD screen, in patients with systemic rheumatic diseases. A total of 1093 serum samples were assayed using CTD screen and indirect immunofluorescent (IIF) methods. Among them, 162 were diagnosed with systemic rheumatic disease, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and mixed connective tissue disease (MCT). The remaining 931 with non-systemic rheumatic disease were assigned to the control group. The median ratios of CTD screen tests were significantly higher in the systemic rheumatic disease group than in the control group. The positive likelihood ratios of the CTD screen were higher than those of IIF in patients with total rheumatic diseases (4.1 vs. 1.6), including SLE (24.3 vs. 10.7). The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC-AUCs) of the CTD screen for discriminating total rheumatic diseases, RA, SLE, and MCT from controls were 0.68, 0.56, 0.92 and 0.80, respectively. The ROC-AUCs of the combinations with IIF were significantly higher in patients with total rheumatic diseases (0.72) and MCT (0.85) than in those of the CTD screen alone. Multivariate analysis indicated that both the CTD screen and IIF were independent variables for predicting systemic rheumatic disease. CTD screen alone and in combination with IIF were a valuable diagnostic tool for predicting systemic rheumatic diseases, particularly for SLE.</p></div

Sensitivity, specificity, and ROC-AUC of CTD screen, tested independently and in combination^a.

<p>Sensitivity, specificity, and ROC-AUC of CTD screen, tested independently and in combination<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0173597#t003fn002" target="_blank">^a</a>.</p

Qualitative and quantitative CTD screen results compared to IIF (n = 1093).

<p>Qualitative and quantitative CTD screen results compared to IIF (n = 1093).</p

Multivariate analysis^a of the outcomes of systematic rheumatic disease.

<p>Multivariate analysis<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0173597#t004fn002" target="_blank">^a</a> of the outcomes of systematic rheumatic disease.</p

Study population characteristics and IIF and CTD screen results based on study group.

<p>Study population characteristics and IIF and CTD screen results based on study group.</p

CTD screen reactivity in patients with systemic rheumatic diseases compared with the control group.

<p>The highest CTD screen reactivity was found in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), whereas the lowest reactivity was found in the control group. Abbreviations: IIF, indirect immunofluorescence; RA, rheumatoid arthritis; SLE, systemic lupus erythematosus; MCT, mixed connective tissue disease.</p

Diagnostic performance of CTD screen and its combination with IIF for predicting systematic rheumatic diseases.

<p>(A) Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves of CTD screen and its combination with indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) for discriminating total systemic rheumatic disease (n = 162) from the control group (n = 931). The areas under the ROC curves (AUCs) for CTD screen and its combination with IIF were 0.68 and 0.72, respectively, demonstrating a significant difference (<i>P</i> = 0.0054). (B) ROC curves for CTD screen and its combination with IIF for differentiating rheumatoid arthritis (RA) (n = 100) from the control group. The AUCs of CTD screen and its combination with IIF were 0.56 and 0.61, respectively. (C) ROC curves for the CTD screen combined with IIF for differentiating systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) (n = 35) from the control group. The AUCs of CTD screen and its combination with IIF were 0.92 and 0.94, respectively. (D) ROC curves for CTD screen and its combination with IIF for discriminating mixed connective tissue disease (MCT) (n = 23) from the control group. The AUCs of CTD screen and its combination with IIF were 0.80 and 0.85, respectively, and they were statistically different (<i>P</i> = 0.0410).</p