Fish bone foreign body presenting with an acute fulminating retropharyngeal abscess in a resource-challenged center: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>A retropharyngeal abscess is a potentially life-threatening infection in the deep space of the neck, which can compromise the airway. Its management requires highly specialized care, including surgery and intensive care, to reduce mortality. This is the first case of a gas-forming abscess reported from this region, but not the first such report in the literature.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>We present a case of a 16-month-old Yoruba baby girl with a gas-forming retropharyngeal abscess secondary to fish bone foreign body with laryngeal spasm that was managed in the recovery room. We highlight specific problems encountered in the management of this case in a resource-challenged center such as ours.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We describe an unusual presentation of a gas-forming organism causing a retropharyngeal abscess in a child. The patient's condition was treated despite the challenges of inadequate resources for its management. We recommend early recognition through adequate evaluation of any oropharyngeal injuries or infection and early referral to the specialist with prompt surgical intervention.</p

Single wall closed-form differential ultrasound calibration.

In freehand 3D ultrasound, images are acquired while the position of the transducer is recorded with a tracking device. Calibration is essential in this technique to find the transformation from the image coordinates to the reference coordinate system. The single wall technique is a common calibration method because a simple plane phantom is used. Despite its advantages, such as ease of phantom construction and image analysis, this method requires large number of images to converge to the solution. One reason is a lack of a closed-form solution. Also, the technique uses slightly illconditioned sets of equations with a high condition number due to limited range of scanning motions that produce clear images of the plane. Here, a novel closed-form formulation has been proposed for the single wall calibration technique. Also, differential measurements of the plane image are used instead of absolute plane detection to improve accuracy. The closed-form solution leads to more accurate and robust results while providing an insight into understanding error propagation and finding the optimal set of transducer poses. Results have been compared to the conventional single wall technique. A residual error of 0.14 mm is achieved for the proposed method compared to 0.91 mm in the conventional approach. Copyright 2012 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofReviewedFacult

Out-of-plane motion estimation based on a Rician-Inverse Gaussian model of RF ultrasound signals: speckle tracking without fully developed speckle.

Fully developed speckle has been used previously to estimate the out-of-plane motion of ultrasound images. However, in real tissue the rarity of such patterns and the presence of coherency diminish both the precision and the accuracy of the out-of-plane motion estimation. In this paper, for the first time, we propose a simple mathematical derivation for out-of-plane motion estimation in which the coherent and non-coherent parts of the RF echo signal are separated. This method is based on the Rician-Inverse Gaussian stochastic model of the speckle formation process, which can be considered as a generalized form of the K-distribution with richer parameterization. The flexibility of the proposed method allows considering any patch of the RF echo signal for the purpose of displacement estimation. The experimental results on real tissue demonstrate the potential of the proposed method for accurate out-of-plane estimation. The underestimation of motion in ex vivo bovine tissue at 1 mm displacement is reduced to 15.5% compared to 37% for a base-line method. Copyright 2012 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofReviewedFacult

Date fruit processing waste and approaches to its valorization : A review

In the Middle East and North Africa, dates are a traditional and economically valuable crop, playing an essential role in people's daily diets. Date fruit production and related processing industry generate a large quantity of waste; for illustration, the date juicing industry produces roughly 17-28% Date press cake (DPC), which is mainly discarded in open lands and drains. Considering the generation volume and the nutrient content of DPC, this organic by-product stream can be valorized through the production of a wide range of products with a great market appeal, such as volatile fatty acids, activated carbon, organic acids, etc. To provide an insight into the feasibility of the application DPC as a green precursor for various chemical and biological processes, the chemical and nutritional composition of dates and DPC, an overview of the date processing industries, and common practices conducted for DPC valorization addressed and thoroughly discussed, in this review

Alignment and calibration of high frequency ultrasound (HFUS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) 1D transducers using a dual wedge-tri step phantom

This paper introduces a novel alignment and calibration method for high frequency ultrasound (HFUS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) 1D transducers. 2D images are constructed by means of translation of the transducers using a linear motor stage. Physical alignment of the transducers is needed in order to capture images of the same crosssectional plane, and calibration is needed to determine the relative coordinates of the images, including the image skew. A dual wedge-tri step phantom is created for both alignment and calibration. This phantom includes two symmetrical wedges and three steps that provide the user with visual feedback on how well the scan plane is aligned with the midplane of the phantom. The phantom image consists of five line segments, each of which corresponds to one of the wedges or steps. The slopes and positions of the lines are extracted from the image and compared with the phantom model. The scan plane parameters are found so that the difference between the model and extracted features is minimized. The main advantage of this phantom is that only one frame is required to determine translations, orientations, and skew parameters of the scan plane with respect to the phantom. Experimental results with ocular imaging show the ability to achieve alignment based on this method and its potential for medical applications. Copyright 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofMechanical Engineering, Department ofReviewedFacult