Assessment of procedure related anxiety and depression in oncologic patients before F-18 FDG PET-CT imaging

Background: The aim of this study was to study objectively the level of anxiety and depression in patients undergoing positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT).One hundred and forty four oncologic out-patients (76 male, 68 female) were included in this study. Methods: All patients were referred to Nuclear Medicine Department for Fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (F-18 FDG) PET-CT imaging for the assessment of their malignant or possibly malignant diseases. The Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale and the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory I and II were used to evaluate the anxiety and depression levels in these patients. Results: The mean anxiety and depression scores of The Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale prior to F-18 FDG PET-CT were 9.2 ( ± 3.8) and 6.6 ( ± 3.4), respectively. The mean state and trait anxiety scores of the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory I and II prior to F-18 FDG PET-CT were 40.4 (± 8.5) and 46.62 ± 7.8, respectively. The Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale and the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory I and II anxiety scores were found to be significantly higher in female patients, smokers and in patients with higher stage disease. Conclusion: Our results suggest that F-18 FDG PET-CT imaging may at least contribute to patient's baseline anxiety which is already generated by being an oncology patient, and thus nuclear medicine physicians should handle the patients with extra care to minimize this affect. © 2015, Umut Elboga, et al

Computed tomography-osteoabsorptiometry for assessing the density distribution of subchondral bone as a measure of long-term mechanical adaptation in individual joints

To estimate subchondral mineralisation patterns which represent the long-term loading history of individual joints, a method has been developed employing computed tomography (CT) which permits repeated examination of living joints. The method was tested on 5 knee, 3 sacroiliac, 3 ankle and 5 shoulder joints and then investigated with X-ray densitometry. A CT absorptiometric presentation and maps of the area distribution of the subchondral bone density areas were derived using an image analyser. Comparison of the results from both X-ray densitometry and CT-absorptiometry revealed almost identical pictures of distribution of the subchondral bone density. The method may be used to examine subchondral mineralisation as a measure of the mechanical adaptability of joints in the living subject

A new wireless asynchronous data communications module for industrial applications

All the sensors such as temperature, humidity, and pressure used in industry provide analog outputs as inputs for their control units. Wireless transmission of the data has advantages on wired transmission such as USB port, parallel port and serial port and therefore has great importance for industrial applications. In this work, a new wireless asynchronous data communications module has been developed to send the earth magnetic field data around a ferromagnetic material detected by a KMZ51 AMR sensor. The transmitter module transmits the analog data obtained from a source to a computer environment where they are stored and then presented in a graphical form. In this design, an amplitude shift keying (ASK) transceiver working at the frequency of 433.92 MHz which is a frequency inside the so called Industrial Scientific Medical band (ISM band) used for wireless communications. The analog data first fed into a 10-bit ADC controlled by a PIC microcontroller and then the digital data is sent to the transmitter. A preamble bit string is added in front of the data bits and another bit string for achieving synchronization and determination the start of the data is used. The data arriving at the receiver is taken by the microcontroller and sent to a LCD display as well as the serial port of a computer where it is written in a text file. A Visual Basic based graphics interface is designed to receive, store and present the data in the form of graphical shapes. In the paper, all the work has been explained in detail. © 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

An Analysis by Synthesis Approach for Automatic Vertebral Shape Identification in Clinical QCT

Quantitative computed tomography (QCT) is a widely used tool for osteoporosis diagnosis and monitoring. The assessment of cortical markers like cortical bone mineral density (BMD) and thickness is a demanding task, mainly because of the limited spatial resolution of QCT. We propose a direct model based method to automatically identify the surface through the center of the cortex of human vertebra. We develop a statistical bone model and analyze its probability distribution after the imaging process. Using an as-rigid-as-possible deformation we find the cortical surface that maximizes the likelihood of our model given the input volume. Using the European Spine Phantom (ESP) and a high resolution \mu CT scan of a cadaveric vertebra, we show that the proposed method is able to accurately identify the real center of cortex ex-vivo. To demonstrate the in-vivo applicability of our method we use manually obtained surfaces for comparison.Comment: Presented on German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR) 2018 in Stuttgar

Magnification, dust and time-delay constraints from the first resolved strongly lensed Type Ia supernova

We report lensing magnifications, extinction, and time-delay estimates for the first resolved, multiply-imaged Type Ia supernova iPTF16geu, at z = 0.409, using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations in combination with supporting ground-based data. Multi-band photometry of the resolved images provides unique information about the differential dimming due to dust in the lensing galaxy. Using HST and Keck AO reference images taken after the SN faded, we obtain a total lensing magnification for iPTF16geu of μ = 67.8^(+2.6)_(−2.9), accounting for extinction in the host and lensing galaxy. As expected from the symmetry of the system, we measure very short time-delays for the three fainter images with respect to the brightest one: -0.23 ± 0.99, -1.43 ± 0.74 and 1.36 ± 1.07 days. Interestingly, we find large differences between the magnifications of the four supernova images, even after accounting for uncertainties in the extinction corrections: Δm_1 = −3.88^(+0.07)_(−0.06), Δm_2 = −2.99^(+0.09)_(−0.08), Δm_3 = −2.19^(+0.14)_(−0.15) and Δm_4 = −2.40^(+0.14)_(−0.12) mag, discrepant with model predictions suggesting similar image brightnesses. A possible explanation for the large differences is gravitational lensing by substructures, micro- or millilensing, in addition to the large scale lens causing the image separations. We find that the inferred magnification is insensitive to the assumptions about the dust properties in the host and lens galaxy