SAMIHS: Adaptation of Segment Anything Model for Intracranial Hemorrhage Segmentation

Segment Anything Model (SAM), a vision foundation model trained on large-scale annotations, has recently continued raising awareness within medical image segmentation. Despite the impressive capabilities of SAM on natural scenes, it struggles with performance decline when confronted with medical images, especially those involving blurry boundaries and highly irregular regions of low contrast. In this paper, a SAM-based parameter-efficient fine-tuning method, called SAMIHS, is proposed for intracranial hemorrhage segmentation, which is a crucial and challenging step in stroke diagnosis and surgical planning. Distinguished from previous SAM and SAM-based methods, SAMIHS incorporates parameter-refactoring adapters into SAM's image encoder and considers the efficient and flexible utilization of adapters' parameters. Additionally, we employ a combo loss that combines binary cross-entropy loss and boundary-sensitive loss to enhance SAMIHS's ability to recognize the boundary regions. Our experimental results on two public datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. Code is available at https://github.com/mileswyn/SAMIHS .Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Ultrasound-guided puncture and drainage for penile abscess: Case report and review of the literature

A subcutaneous abscess of the penis is a rare condition. It can be idiopathic or have an underlying cause, such as intracavernous injection therapy, foreign body, dilated perineal abscess, abnormal erection, or trauma. Clinical signs are mainly swelling in the penis, penile pain, and swelling. Conventional treatment is primarily surgical incision and drainage, followed by systemic antibiotic therapy. In recent years, with the development of medical technology, minimally invasive interventions and less invasive techniques, such as ultrasound-guided aspiration, are being developed. This article aims to report a case of ultrasound-guided successful diagnosis and treatment of an aseptic idiopathic subcutaneous abscess at the root of the penis and to review the literature on penile abscesses. The patient, a 61-year-old male, underwent ultrasound-guided puncture and drainage using a coaxial aspiration/flushing technique in combination with antibiotics to treat this rare urinary tract condition. The patient recovered well postoperatively and was discharged 3 days later. At a 2-week postoperative follow-up, an ultrasound showed a marked reduction in the penile abscess mass

GDF11 enhances therapeutic functions of mesenchymal stem cells for angiogenesis

Background The efficacy of stem cell therapy for ischemia repair has been limited by low cell retention rate. Growth differentiation factor 11 (GDF11) is a member of the transforming growth factor-beta super family, which has multiple effects on development, physiology and diseases. The objective of the study is to investigate whether GDF11 could affect the efficacy of stem cell transplantation. Methods We explored the effects of GDF11 on proangiogenic activities of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for angiogenic therapy in vitro and in vivo. Results Mouse bone marrow-derived MSCs were transduced with lentiviral vector to overexpress GDF11 (MSCGDF11). After exposed to hypoxia and serum deprivation for 48 h, MSCGDF11 were significantly better in viability than control MSCs (MSCvector). MSCGDF11 also had higher mobility and better angiogenic paracrine effects. The cytokine antibody array showed more angiogenic cytokines in the conditioned medium of MSCGDF11 than that of MSCvector, such as epidermal growth factor, platelet-derived growth factor-BB, placenta growth factor. When MSCs (1 x 10(6) cells in 50 mu l) were injected into ischemic hindlimb of mice after femoral artery ligation, MSCGDF11 had higher retention rate in the muscle than control MSCs. Injection of MSCGDF11 resulted in better blood reperfusion and limb salvage than that of control MSCs after 14 days. Significantly more CD31(+) endothelial cells and alpha-SMA + smooth muscle cells were detected in the ischemic muscles that received MSCGDF11. The effects of GDF11 were through activating TGF-beta receptor and PI3K/Akt signaling pathway. Conclusion Our study demonstrated an essential role of GDF11 in promoting therapeutic functions of MSCs for ischemic diseases by enhancing MSC viability, mobility, and angiogenic paracrine functions

A cell type-specific expression map of NCoR1 and SMRT transcriptional co-repressors in the mouse brain.

The ability to rapidly change gene expression patterns is essential for differentiation, development, and functioning of the brain. Throughout development, or in response to environmental stimuli, gene expression patterns are tightly regulated by the dynamic interplay between transcription activators and repressors. Nuclear receptor corepressor 1 (NCoR1) and silencing mediator for retinoid or thyroid-hormone receptors (SMRT) are the best characterized transcriptional co-repressors from a molecular point of view. They mediate epigenetic silencing of gene expression in a wide range of developmental and homeostatic processes in many tissues, including the brain. For instance, NCoR1 and SMRT regulate neuronal stem cell proliferation and differentiation during brain development and they have been implicated in learning and memory. However, we still have a limited understanding of their regional and cell type-specific expression in the brain. In this study, we used fluorescent immunohistochemistry to map their expression patterns throughout the adult mouse brain. Our findings reveal that NCoR1 and SMRT share an overall neuroanatomical distribution, and are detected in both excitatory and inhibitory neurons. However, we observed striking differences in their cell type-specific expression in glial cells. Specifically, all oligodendrocytes express NCoR1, but only a subset express SMRT. In addition, NCoR1, but not SMRT, was detected in a subset of astrocytes and in the microglia. These novel observations are corroborated by single cell transcriptomics and emphasize how NCoR1 and SMRT may contribute to distinct biological functions, suggesting an exclusive role of NCoR1 in innate immune responses in the brain

A cell type-specific expression map of NCoR1 and SMRT transcriptional co-repressors in the mouse brain.

The ability to rapidly change gene expression patterns is essential for differentiation, development, and functioning of the brain. Throughout development, or in response to environmental stimuli, gene expression patterns are tightly regulated by the dynamic interplay between transcription activators and repressors. Nuclear receptor corepressor 1 (NCoR1) and silencing mediator for retinoid or thyroid-hormone receptors (SMRT) are the best characterized transcriptional co-repressors from a molecular point of view. They mediate epigenetic silencing of gene expression in a wide range of developmental and homeostatic processes in many tissues, including the brain. For instance, NCoR1 and SMRT regulate neuronal stem cell proliferation and differentiation during brain development and they have been implicated in learning and memory. However, we still have a limited understanding of their regional and cell type-specific expression in the brain. In this study, we used fluorescent immunohistochemistry to map their expression patterns throughout the adult mouse brain. Our findings reveal that NCoR1 and SMRT share an overall neuroanatomical distribution, and are detected in both excitatory and inhibitory neurons. However, we observed striking differences in their cell type-specific expression in glial cells. Specifically, all oligodendrocytes express NCoR1, but only a subset express SMRT. In addition, NCoR1, but not SMRT, was detected in a subset of astrocytes and in the microglia. These novel observations are corroborated by single cell transcriptomics and emphasize how NCoR1 and SMRT may contribute to distinct biological functions, suggesting an exclusive role of NCoR1 in innate immune responses in the brain

Four-Dimensional Stimuli-Responsive Hydrogels Micro-Structured via Femtosecond Laser Additive Manufacturing

Rapid fabricating and harnessing stimuli-responsive behaviors of microscale bio-compatible hydrogels are of great interest to the emerging micro-mechanics, drug delivery, artificial scaffolds, nano-robotics, and lab chips. Herein, we demonstrate a novel femtosecond laser additive manufacturing process with smart materials for soft interactive hydrogel micro-machines. Bio-compatible hyaluronic acid methacryloyl was polymerized with hydrophilic diacrylate into an absorbent hydrogel matrix under a tight topological control through a 532 nm green femtosecond laser beam. The proposed hetero-scanning strategy modifies the hierarchical polymeric degrees inside the hydrogel matrix, leading to a controllable surface tension mismatch. Strikingly, these programmable stimuli-responsive matrices mechanized hydrogels into robotic applications at the micro/nanoscale (<300 × 300 × 100 μm3). Reverse high-freedom shape mutations of diversified microstructures were created from simple initial shapes and identified without evident fatigue. We further confirmed the biocompatibility, cell adhesion, and tunable mechanics of the as-prepared hydrogels. Benefiting from the high-efficiency two-photon polymerization (TPP), nanometer feature size (<200 nm), and flexible digitalized modeling technique, many more micro/nanoscale hydrogel robots or machines have become obtainable in respect of future interdisciplinary applications

Hydrothermal Microwave Synthesis of Co3O4/In2O3 Nanostructures for Photoelectrocatalytic Reduction of Cr(VI)

Co3O4/In2O3 nanocomposites were prepared via a microwave-hydrothermal method and directly used as photoanodes for the photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) process to reduce Cr(VI). The as-prepared Co3O4/In2O3 composites show a rod-like structure, which is composed of nanoparticles. The PEC experiments indicated that after 120 min of irradiation with 0.7 V bias voltage and visible light, the Cr(VI) reduction efficiency of Co3O4/In2O3 composites in aqueous solution was 100%, which was superior to the samples prepared by other methods. Moreover, the Co3O4/In2O3 composite still had a high catalytic activity after five runs of PEC experiments. Elimination experiments demonstrate that photo-generated electrons (e–) performed a key role in the catalytic reduction of Cr(VI). The significantly improved PEC performance can be attributed to the bias voltage and the p-n heterojunction formed between Co3O4 and In2O3. Therefore, Co3O4/In2O3 nanocomposites have a considerable potential for the PEC reduction of Cr(VI)

A reversible epigenetic memory of inflammatory injury controls lineage plasticity and tumor initiation in the mouse pancreas

Inflammation is essential to the disruption of tissue homeostasis and can destabilize the identity of lineage-committed epithelial cells. Here, we employ lineage-traced mouse models, single-cell transcriptomic and chromatin analyses, and CUT&TAG to identify an epigenetic memory of inflammatory injury in the pancreatic acinar cell compartment. Despite resolution of pancreatitis, our data show that acinar cells fail to return to their molecular baseline, with retention of elevated chromatin accessibility and H3K4me1 at metaplasia genes, such that memory represents an incomplete cell fate decision. In vivo, we find this epigenetic memory controls lineage plasticity, with diminished metaplasia in response to a second insult but increased tumorigenesis with an oncogenic Kras mutation. The lowered threshold for oncogenic transformation, in turn, can be restored by blockade of MAPK signaling. Together, we define the chromatin dynamics, molecular encoding, and recall of a prolonged epigenetic memory of inflammatory injury that impacts future responses but remains reversible