Thoracic low-dose CT image processing using an artifact suppressed large-scale nonlocal means.

International audienceThe x-ray exposure to patients has become a major concern in computed tomography (CT) and minimizing the radiation exposure has been one of the major efforts in the CT field. Due to plenty high-attenuation tissues in the human chest, under low-dose scan protocols, thoracic low-dose CT (LDCT) images tend to be severely degraded by excessive mottled noise and non-stationary streak artifacts. Their removal is rather a challenging task because the streak artifacts with directional prominence are often hard to discriminate from the attenuation information of normal tissues. This paper describes a two-step processing scheme called 'artifact suppressed large-scale nonlocal means' for suppressing both noise and artifacts in thoracic LDCT images. Specific scale and direction properties were exploited to discriminate the noise and artifacts from image structures. Parallel implementation has been introduced to speed up the whole processing by more than 100 times. Phantom and patient CT images were both acquired for evaluation purpose. Comparative qualitative and quantitative analyses were both performed that allows conclusion on the efficacy of our method in improving thoracic LDCT data

Secular trend of the leading causes of death in China from 2003 to 2013

Background: To analyze the epidemiological characteristics and secular trends of the leading causes of death in China.Methods: Data on the leading causes of death was collected from the Statistical Yearbook of China. Data for 11 years, from 2003 to 2013, was analyzed by regression analysis and chi-square test.Results: The top 3 causes of death from 2009 to 2013 were cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and cardiopathy, with the role of cardiopathy increasing over time (P<0.01). The proportion of deaths related to cardio-cerebrovascular diseases in urban and rural areas increased to 41.9% and 44.8%, respectively, in 2013, and was significantly higher than that for cancer, 25.5% and 22.4% (both P<0.01). Injury and poisoning in urban or rural areas represented the fifth leading cause of death. In 2006, endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic diseases were the sixth main cause of death, with 3.3% in urban areas. The role of genito-urinary,respiratory, and digestive system diseases in urban areas and genito-urinary system diseases in rural areas decreased during this period (all P<0.05).Conclusion: Cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and cardiopathy accounted for more than 67% of all deaths from 2007 to 2013 in China, and significantly increased in proportion from 2003 to 2013.Keywords: Causes of death; China; cancer; cardiovascular diseas

Secular trend of the leading causes of death in China from 2003 to 2013.

Background: To analyze the epidemiological characteristics and secular trends of the leading causes of death in China. Methods: Data on the leading causes of death was collected from the Statistical Yearbook of China. Data for 11 years, from 2003 to 2013, was analyzed by regression analysis and chi-square test. Results: The top 3 causes of death from 2009 to 2013 were cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and cardiopathy, with the role of cardiopathy increasing over time (P<0.01). The proportion of deaths related to cardio-cerebrovascular diseases in urban and rural areas increased to 41.9% and 44.8%, respectively, in 2013, and was significantly higher than that for cancer, 25.5% and 22.4% (both P<0.01). Injury and poisoning in urban or rural areas represented the fifth leading cause of death. In 2006, endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic diseases were the sixth main cause of death, with 3.3% in urban areas. The role of genito-urinary, respiratory, and digestive system diseases in urban areas and genito-urinary system diseases in rural areas decreased during this period (all P<0.05). Conclusion: Cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and cardiopathy accounted for more than 67% of all deaths from 2007 to 2013 in China, and significantly increased in proportion from 2003 to 2013

Spin Logic Devices via Electric Field Controlled Magnetization Reversal by Spin-Orbit Torque

We describe a spin logic device with controllable magnetization switching of perpendicularly magnetized ferromagnet/heavy metal structures on a ferroelectric (1-x)[Pb(Mg 1/3 Nb 2/3 )O 3 ]-x[PbTiO 3 ] (PMN-PT) substrate using current-induced spin-orbit torque. The devices were operated without an external magnetic field and controlled by voltages as low as 10 V applied across the PMN-PT substrate, which is much lower compared with the previous reports (500 V). The deterministic switching with smaller voltage was realized from the virgin state of the PMN-PT. The ferroelectric simulation shows the unsaturated minor loop exhibits obvious asymmetries in the polarizations. Larger polarization can be induced from the initial ferroelectric state, while it is difficult for opposite polarization. The XNOR, AND, NAND and NOT logic functions were demonstrated by the deterministic magnetization switching from the interaction between the spin-orbit torque and electric field at the PMN-PT/Pt interface. The nonvolatile spin logic scheme in this letter is simple, scalable and programmable, which are favorable in the logic-in-memory design with low energy consumption

Microscopic production characteristics of tight oil in the nanopores of different CO2-affected areas from molecular dynamics simulations

Understanding the mechanisms of CO2 extraction or flooding are vital for enhancing oil recovery (EOR) in tight reservoirs. In this study, the CO2 EOR mechanism in the displacement-affected area (DPAA) and diffusionaffected area (DFAA) of quartz nanopores were thoroughly investigated using molecular dynamics simulation techniques. First, the following two contents were mainly simulated, namely CO2 flooding oil in the single/ double nanopores of DPAA and CO2 extraction oil in dead-end nanopores of the DFAA with and without the water film. Then, tight oil potential energy, threshold capillary pressure, CO2 solubility, and oil swelling in nanopores were calculated to clarify the effects of CO2 on oil transport. Moreover, different CO2 injection/ flowback rates and different water film thicknesses on dead-end nanopores on oil recovery were discussed. In the DPAA, the CO2 solubility and the oil swelling factor gradually decreased with distance from the CO2-oil interface (Y = 0 nm), where the higher the injection rate, the more easily the CO2 dissolved in the oil. However, the injection rate of CO2 was inversely proportional to oil recovery. In addition, it took longer for the displacement efficiency in the 6 nm pore of double pores to reach the same displacement efficiency as in the single 6 nm pore. In the DFAA, the effect of flowback rate on the displacement efficiency of oil was relatively low. However, the thickness of the water film was a key factor that affected the oil displacement efficiency in the DFAA

Dictionary learning based denoising of low-dose X-ray CT image.

International audienceA dictionary learning based denoising method is introduced to eliminate the noise in low-dose computed-tomography(LDCT)image. Aiming at the phantom and patient images, the k-means singular value decomposition(K-SVD)algorithm is adopted to train image dictionary iteratively based on LDCT and normal-dose CT(NDCT)images. Then, based on the orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm, the sparse representation decomposes the noise image into sparse component which is related to image information and remains which are regarded as noise. Finally, noises can be suppressed by reconstructing image only with its sparse components. The experimental results show that the performance of the proposed method is strongly affected by the dictionary size and the constraints for sparsity in dictionary training. The better performance can be achieved when training samples are extracted from NDCT image instead of LDCT image. Under the same noise level, compared with the traditional de-noising methods, the proposed method is more effective in suppressing noise and improving the visual effect while maintaining more diagnostic image details

Microscopic production characteristics of tight oil in the nanopores of different CO2-affected areas from molecular dynamics simulations

Understanding the mechanisms of CO2 extraction or flooding are vital for enhancing oil recovery (EOR) in tight reservoirs. In this study, the CO2 EOR mechanism in the displacement-affected area (DPAA) and diffusionaffected area (DFAA) of quartz nanopores were thoroughly investigated using molecular dynamics simulation techniques. First, the following two contents were mainly simulated, namely CO2 flooding oil in the single/ double nanopores of DPAA and CO2 extraction oil in dead-end nanopores of the DFAA with and without the water film. Then, tight oil potential energy, threshold capillary pressure, CO2 solubility, and oil swelling in nanopores were calculated to clarify the effects of CO2 on oil transport. Moreover, different CO2 injection/ flowback rates and different water film thicknesses on dead-end nanopores on oil recovery were discussed. In the DPAA, the CO2 solubility and the oil swelling factor gradually decreased with distance from the CO2-oil interface (Y = 0 nm), where the higher the injection rate, the more easily the CO2 dissolved in the oil. However, the injection rate of CO2 was inversely proportional to oil recovery. In addition, it took longer for the displacement efficiency in the 6 nm pore of double pores to reach the same displacement efficiency as in the single 6 nm pore. In the DFAA, the effect of flowback rate on the displacement efficiency of oil was relatively low. However, the thickness of the water film was a key factor that affected the oil displacement efficiency in the DFAA

Occurrence characteristics and influential factors of movable oil in nano-pores by molecular dynamics simulation

CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) technology has shown great application potential in the development of tight reservoirs. Since the proportion of nano-pores in tight oil reservoirs exceeds 77%, it is necessary to further study the occurrence state of crude oil in nano-pores. In this paper, the molecular dynamics simulation was applied to study the adsorption and diffusion behaviors of multi-component crude oil in quartz (hydrophilic) nano-pores. Besides, the density discretization method was used to investigate the occurrence characteristics of crude oil, the proportion of movable fluid in nano-pores, and the effects of CO2 and polar molecules (C3H6O) on the adsorption characteristics of crude oil. The simulation results showed that the adsorption state of crude oil in the quartz nano-pores was in the form of 4 adsorption layers with a thickness of 0.45 nm each. In nano-pores, the oil molecules with longer molecular chains were more likely to aggregate and adsorb on the quartz surface. Among them, polar oil molecules have the strongest adsorption capacity on the quartz surface. Moreover, the crude oil potential energy and the self-diffusion coefficient gradually increased from the vicinity of the quartz wall and tended to be stable in the free layer. Meanwhile, the content of movable crude oil gradually augmented with the increasement of nanometer pore width and temperature. Furthermore, the pressure had little effect on the density distribution of crude oil in the pores. In contrast, the temperature had a more significant effect on the density distribution of the adsorption layer. At last, due to the more substantial adsorption capacity of CO2 on the rock surface, the crude oil adsorbed initially on the rock surface would be stripped off by CO2, converting from irreducible oil to moveable oil