Cerebral and Peripheral Tissue Oxygenation in Children Supported on ECMO for Cardio-Respiratory Failure

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a rescue therapy for patients with cardio-respiratory failure. Establishing, maintaining and weaning from ECMO may increase the risk for intracranial injury. We used a dual channel near infrared system to monitor cerebral and peripheral tissue oxygenation in 3 venoarterial (VA) and 1 venovenous (VV) ECMO patients undergoing manipulations in the ECMO circuit flows. Spectral analysis was performed on the oxyhaemoglobin data collected from these patients with the aim of comparing oscillations at range of frequencies appearing in the two measurement sites

A Comparison of Accelerated and Non-accelerated MRI Scans for Brain Volume and Boundary Shift Integral Measures of Volume Change: Evidence from the ADNI Dataset

The aim of this study was to assess whether the use of accelerated MRI scans in place of non-accelerated scans influenced brain volume and atrophy rate measures in controls and subjects with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. We used data from 861 subjects at baseline, 573 subjects at 6 months and 384 subjects at 12 months from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). We calculated whole-brain, ventricular and hippocampal atrophy rates using the k-means boundary shift integral (BSI). Scan quality was visually assessed and the proportion of good quality accelerated and non-accelerated scans compared. We also compared MMSE scores, vascular burden and age between subjects with poor quality scans with those with good quality scans. Finally, we estimated sample size requirements for a hypothetical clinical trial when using atrophy rates from accelerated scans and non-accelerated scans. No significant differences in whole-brain, ventricular and hippocampal volumes and atrophy rates were found between accelerated and non-accelerated scans. Twice as many non-accelerated scan pairs suffered from at least some motion artefacts compared with accelerated scan pairs (p ≤ 0.001), which may influence the BSI. Subjects whose accelerated scans had significant motion had a higher mean vascular burden and age (p ≤ 0.05) whilst subjects whose non-accelerated scans had significant motion had poorer MMSE scores (p ≤ 0.05). No difference in estimated sample size requirements was found when using accelerated vs. non-accelerated scans. Accelerated scans reduce scan time and are better tolerated. Therefore it may be advantageous to use accelerated over non-accelerated scans in clinical trials that use ADNI-type protocols, especially in more cognitively impaired subjects

Effects of the trawling ban on the diversity of demersal crustaceans (orders: decapoda and stomatopoda) in the marine environment of Hong Kong, South China

Oral PresentationFisheries & Marine Resources ManagementBottom trawling has been demonstrated to be one of the most destructive fishing methods to marine benthic communities. Since the 1970s, marine fishery resources in Hong Kong, especially large predatory species, have been overexploited by non-selective fishing gears including bottom and pelagic trawlers. This fishing down the trophic level has resulted in a benthic ecosystem primarily dominated by small herbivorous and omnivorous fishes and crustaceans. To mitigate such impacts, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has implemented a territory-wide trawling ban in local waters since 31 December 2012. This study aims to investigate whether crustacean resources, in particular of the orders Decapoda and ...postprin

Atrophy Measurement Based on Segmentation Propagation and the Boundary Shift Integral Technique

Using segmentation propagation, label fusion and the boundary shift integral method, we analysed the data provided for the MICCAI’ 12 challenge entitled: “Atrophy measurement biomarkers using structural MRI for Alzheimers disease: a challenge to assess measurement reliability and bias”. The fully automated pipeline we used, based on open-source software, is detailed in this paper along with some of the result

Conserving intertidal habitats: what is the potential of ecological engineering to mitigate impacts of coastal structures?

Poster presentation: P-62Human ImpactsGlobally, coastal human population growth and urbanization continues in a fast pace, while climatic change leads to stormier seas and rising tides. Both driving forces jointly generate a strong and increasing demand for land reclamation and infrastructure protection in coastal areas which require engineered defence structures such as sea walls. This study aimed to review ecological impacts of coastal engineered structures on intertidal ecosystems, update the current status of ecological engineering to mitigate these impacts, and evaluate the effectiveness of such mitigations in relation to the conservation of intertidal habitats and biodiversity. Engineered structures alter important physical, chemical and biological processes of intertidal habitats, and ...postprin

Recognising facial expressions in video sequences

We introduce a system that processes a sequence of images of a front-facing human face and recognises a set of facial expressions. We use an efficient appearance-based face tracker to locate the face in the image sequence and estimate the deformation of its non-rigid components. The tracker works in real-time. It is robust to strong illumination changes and factors out changes in appearance caused by illumination from changes due to face deformation. We adopt a model-based approach for facial expression recognition. In our model, an image of a face is represented by a point in a deformation space. The variability of the classes of images associated to facial expressions are represented by a set of samples which model a low-dimensional manifold in the space of deformations. We introduce a probabilistic procedure based on a nearest-neighbour approach to combine the information provided by the incoming image sequence with the prior information stored in the expression manifold in order to compute a posterior probability associated to a facial expression. In the experiments conducted we show that this system is able to work in an unconstrained environment with strong changes in illumination and face location. It achieves an 89\% recognition rate in a set of 333 sequences from the Cohn-Kanade data base

Spatial and seasonal variations in trophic dynamics of benthic communities of marine molluscs in Hong Kong’s Coastal Waters before and after the Trawling Ban

Poster presentation: P-54Fisheries & Marine Resources ManagementTo rectify the detrimental impact of overfishing and destruction of benthic ecosystems, a territory-wide trawling ban has been imposed in Hong Kong’s coastal marine waters since 31 December 2012. It is anticipated that the local benthic marine ecosystem will gradually recover after the trawl-ban. Using stable isotope analysis (SIA), this study aims to compare trophic dynamics of benthic molluscan communities of eastern, southern and western waters of Hong Kong before and after the trawling ban. The results of this study will also serve as a baseline for studying long-term ecosystem recovery. Trawling ...postprin

The modified Glasgow prognostic score in prostate cancer: results from a retrospective clinical series of 744 patients

<p>Background: As the incidence of prostate cancer continues to rise steeply, there is an increasing need to identify more accurate prognostic markers for the disease. There is some evidence that a higher modified Glasgow Prognostic Score (mGPS) may be associated with poorer survival in patients with prostate cancer but it is not known whether this is independent of other established prognostic factors. Therefore the aim of this study was to describe the relationship between mGPS and survival in patients with prostate cancer after adjustment for other prognostic factors.</p> <p>Methods: Retrospective clinical series on patients in Glasgow, Scotland, for whom data from the Scottish Cancer Registry, including Gleason score, Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA), C-reactive protein (CRP) and albumin, six months prior to or following the diagnosis, were included in this study.</p> <p>The mGPS was constructed by combining CRP and albumin. Five-year and ten-year relative survival and relative excess risk of death were estimated by mGPS categories after adjusting for age, socioeconomic circumstances, Gleason score, PSA and previous in-patient bed days.</p> <p>Results: Seven hundred and forty four prostate cancer patients were identified; of these, 497 (66.8%) died during a maximum follow up of 11.9 years. Patients with mGPS of 2 had poorest 5-year and 10-year relative survival, of 32.6% and 18.8%, respectively. Raised mGPS also had a significant association with excess risk of death at five years (mGPS 2: Relative Excess Risk = 3.57, 95% CI 2.31-5.52) and ten years (mGPS 2: Relative Excess Risk = 3.42, 95% CI 2.25-5.21) after adjusting for age, socioeconomic circumstances, Gleason score, PSA and previous in-patient bed days.</p> <p>Conclusions: The mGPS is an independent and objective prognostic indicator for survival of patients with prostate cancer. It may be useful in determining the clinical management of patients with prostate cancer in addition to established prognostic markers.</p&gt