The value of Statistical Shape Models to Spine Surgery

The increased use of 3D models of organs or bones by the surgeon has lead to rapid development of new methods to automaKze model generaKon

The preparatory Set: A Novel Approach to Understanding Stress, Trauma, and the Bodymind Therapies

Basic to all motile life is a differential approach/avoid response to perceived features of environment. The stages of response are initial reflexive noticing and orienting to the stimulus, preparation, and execution of response. Preparation involves a coordination of many aspects of the organism: muscle tone, posture, breathing, autonomic functions, motivational/emotional state, attentional orientation, and expectations. The organism organizes itself in relation to the challenge. We propose to call this the preparatory set (PS). We suggest that the concept of the PS can offer a more nuanced and flexible perspective on the stress response than do current theories. We also hypothesize that the mechanisms of body-mind therapeutic and educational systems (BTES) can be understood through the PS framework. We suggest that the BTES, including meditative movement, meditation, somatic education, and the body-oriented psychotherapies, are approaches that use interventions on the PS to remedy stress and trauma. We discuss how the PS can be adaptive or maladaptive, how BTES interventions may restore adaptive PS, and how these concepts offer a broader and more flexible view of the phenomena of stress and trauma. We offer supportive evidence for our hypotheses, and suggest directions for future research. We believe that the PS framework will point to ways of improving the management of stress and trauma, and that it will suggest directions of research into the mechanisms of action of BTES

A statistical shape model of the human second cervical vertebra

Purpose: Statistical shape and appearance models play an important role in reducing the segmentation processing timeof a vertebra and in improving results for 3D model development. Here, we describe the different steps in generating astatistical shape model (SSM) of the second cervical vertebra (C2) and provide the shape model for general use by the scientific community. The main difficulties in its construction are the morphological complexity of the C2 and its variability in the population. Methods: The input dataset is composed of manually segmented anonymized patient computerized tomography (CT)scans. The alignment of the different datasets is done with the procrustes alignment on surface models, and then, the registration is cast as a model-fitting problem using a Gaussian process. A principal component analysis (PCA)-based modelis generated which includes the variability of the C2. Results: The SSM was generated using 92 CT scans. The resulting SSM was evaluated for specificity, compactness andgeneralization ability. The SSM of the C2 is freely available to the scientific community in Slicer (an open source soft-ware for image analysis and scientific visualization) with a module created to visualize the SSM using Statismo, a framework for statistical shape modeling. Conclusion: The SSM of the vertebra allows the shape variability of the C2 to be represented. Moreover, the SSM willenable semi-automatic segmentation and 3D model generation of the vertebra, which would greatly benefit surgery planning

Correlating the molecular electrostatic potentials of some organic peroxides with their antimalarial activities

The molecular electrostatic potentials (MEPs) of artemisinin (also known as qinghaosu), yingzhaosu A, and some synthetic analogues have been calculated and studied as a means of distinguishing between high and low antimalarial activity. To facilitate comparison, the dimensionality of the MEP was reduced by Kohonen Neural Network transforms. The reduction revealed that peroxides exhibiting high antimalarial activity are characterized by a continuous strip of negative electric potential surrounding the molecule, whereas peroxides of lesser activity show a broken strip

A statistical shape model of the human second cervical vertebra

Purpose : Statistical shape and appearance models play an important role in reducing the segmentation processing time of a vertebra and in improving results for 3D model development. Here, we describe the different steps in generating a statistical shape model (SSM) of the second cervical vertebra (C2) and provide the shape model for general use by the scientific community. The main difficulties in its construction are the morphological complexity of the C2 and its variability in the population. Methods : The input dataset is composed of manually segmented anonymized patient computerized tomography (CT) scans. The alignment of the different datasets is done with the procrustes alignment on surface models, and then, the registration is cast as a model-fitting problem using a Gaussian process. A principal component analysis (PCA)-based model is generated which includes the variability of the C2. Results : The SSM was generated using 92 CT scans. The resulting SSM was evaluated for specificity, compactness and generalization ability. The SSM of the C2 is freely available to the scientific community in Slicer (an open source software for image analysis and scientific visualization) with a module created to visualize the SSM using Statismo, a framework for statistical shape modeling. Conclusion : The SSM of the vertebra allows the shape variability of the C2 to be represented. Moreover, the SSM will enable semi-automatic segmentation and 3D model generation of the vertebra, which would greatly benefit surgery planning