Recurrent abdominal pain in paediatric patients

Recurrent abdominal pain is a common problem in the paediatric population. While functional abdominal pain accounts for the majority of cases, an organic cause for pain may be found in about 5% to 10% of children. Diagnostic evaluation depends on the clinical presentation and the presence of specific findings. Excessive testing should be avoided as this may increase parental anxiety and put the child through unnecessary stress.published_or_final_versio

PCNL trajectory to predict success in supine PCNL: a novel concept

This journal suppl. contatin program & abstracts of the 29th World Congress of Endourology & SWL WCE, 2011Session - MP23: PNL 2: abstract no. MP23-13INTRODUCTION: Supine PCNL confers certain advantages over prone. Access parameters change with positioning. Supine position limits maneuverability of instruments, limiting access to upper & mid-pole stones. We aim to determine predictive factors for success of supine PCNL through road-mapping of PCNL trajectory. MATERIAL & METHOD: Consecutive patients undergoing PCNL from July-Dec2010 were recruited. Choice of position was made by surgeon. Tracts were performed under USG & fluoroscopy. Distances and angles were measured intra-operatively with rigid and flexible nephroscope, and correlated with pre-operative imaging. RESULTS 19 patients underwent PCNL(13supine, 6prone) Stone load was comparable in both groups. Overall stone clearance after single PCNL was 74%. Regardless of abdominal thickness and approach, all lower pole and renal pelvic stones were reached with mean excursion of 140 mm in supine & 105 mm in prone position. Mean entry angle was 59 for supine, and 35 for prone. In supine PCNL, the upper pole was reached in 4 of 11 tracts, with mean-excursion of 172mm& entry angle of 33. Similarly, 2 of 11 supine PCNL reached middle pole. Conversely, all prone PCNL tracts reached upper & middle pole with decreased excursion & angle. CONCLUSION: PCNL in prone position can reach renal pelvis and 3 poles via lower pole puncture. PCNL trajectory may be a tool to predict success in supine PCNL by estimating chance of reaching mid & upper pole. Skin to upper pole distance larger than 185mm and entry angle more than 48 degrees decrease chance of upper pole access.published_or_final_versionThe 29th World Congress of Endourology & SWL WCE, Kyoto, Japan, 30 November–3 December 2011. In Journal of Endourology, v. 25 suppl 1, p. A145, abstract no. MP23-1

PCNL trajectory: a novel concept to predict success in supine PCNL

香港泌尿外科學會Oral (Free Paper) Session IV - Andrology, Men’s Health and Stone Disease: OP.4-5OBJECTIVE: Supine PCNL confers certain advantages over its prone counterpart but access parameters change with supine positioning. Supine position limits maneuverability of instruments, limiting access to upper and mid-pole stones. We aim to determine predictive factors for success of supine PCNL through road-mapping of ...published_or_final_versionThe 17th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Hong Kong Urological Association, Hong Kong, 6 November 2011. In Program Book, 2011, p. 5

Piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties of PZT/P (VDF-TrFE) composites with constituent phases poled in parallel or anti-parallel directions

2000-2001 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Applications of domain-domain interactions in pathway study

[[abstract]]The domain combination pair approach is employed to derive putative protein domain-domain interactions (DDI) from the protein-protein interactions (PPI) database DIP. The results of putative DDI are computed for seven species. To determine the prediction performance, putative DDI results are compared With that of the database InterDom, where an average matching ratio of about 76% can be achieved. Several real PPI pathways are reconstructed based on the predicted DDI results. It is found that the pathways could be reconstructed with reasonable accuracy. Furthermore, a novel quantity, so called AP-order index, is introduced to predict the regulatory order for six PPI pathways. It is found that the AP-order index is a very reliable parameter to determine the regulatory order of PPI. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

On the rendering and post-processing of simplified dynamic light fields with depth information

This paper studies the rendering and post-processing of a dynamic image-based representation called the simplified dynamic light fields (SDLF) (or plenoptic videos) with depth information. The user viewpoints are limited to a camera line to simplify the capturing and compression processes. By associating each image pixel with its depth value, methods for improving the rendering quality and detecting occlusions are proposed. Due to the limited sampling at depth discontinuities, adaptive lowpass filtering is applied to the detected occluded regions near object boundaries in order to suppress the aliasing artifacts. Rendering results using computer-generated images show that considerable improvement in rendering quality even for dynamic scenes with large depth variations.published_or_final_versio

An object-based approach to image/video-based synthesis and processing for 3-D and multiview televisions

This paper proposes an object-based approach to a class of dynamic image-based representations called "plenoptic videos," where the plenoptic video sequences are segmented into image-based rendering (IBR) objects each with its image sequence, depth map, and other relevant information such as shape and alpha information. This allows desirable functionalities such as scalability of contents, error resilience, and interactivity with individual IBR objects to be supported. Moreover, the rendering quality in scenes with large depth variations can also be improved considerably. A portable capturing system consisting of two linear camera arrays was developed to verify the proposed approach. An important step in the object-based approach is to segment the objects in video streams into layers or IBR objects. To reduce the time for segmenting plenoptic videos under the semiautomatic technique, a new object tracking method based on the level-set method is proposed. Due to possible segmentation errors around object boundaries, natural matting with Bayesian approach is also incorporated into our system. Furthermore, extensions of conventional image processing algorithms to these IBR objects are studied and illustrated with examples. Experimental results are given to illustrate the efficiency of the tracking, matting, rendering, and processing algorithms under the proposed object-based framework. © 2009 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

A 2000 BPS LPC vocoder based on multiband excitation

This paper presents an improved mixed LPC vocoder at 2000 bps using Multi-Band Excitation analysis by a synthesis algorithm. The new vocoder determines the voiced/unvoiced characteristics harmonic by harmonic in a frame, and finds the first voiced/unvoiced transition as the cut-off frequency, which is more accurate and efficient than traditional cut-off frequency detection. The synthetic speech below the cut-off frequency is excited by a series of voiced harmonics, while the signal above the cut-off frequency is simulated by a noise source. The final output speech is the sum of these two outputs. To increase the naturalness and clearness of the synthesized speech, this model applies phase prediction and spectral enhancement in the synthesizer. It is also possible to reduce the bit rate to 1200 bps. Informal listening tests indicate that the output speech possesses higher intelligibility and quality than that of the 2.4 kbps LPC-10e standard, and is comparable with the 4.8 kbps FS1016 CELP vocoder.published_or_final_versio