Image-to-Graph Convolutional Network for 2D/3D Deformable Model Registration of Low-Contrast Organs

Organ shape reconstruction based on a single-projection image during treatment has wide clinical scope, e.g., in image-guided radiotherapy and surgical guidance. We propose an image-to-graph convolutional network that achieves deformable registration of a three-dimensional (3D) organ mesh for a low-contrast two-dimensional (2D) projection image. This framework enables simultaneous training of two types of transformation: from the 2D projection image to a displacement map, and from the sampled per-vertex feature to a 3D displacement that satisfies the geometrical constraint of the mesh structure. Assuming application to radiation therapy, the 2D/3D deformable registration performance is verified for multiple abdominal organs that have not been targeted to date, i.e., the liver, stomach, duodenum, and kidney, and for pancreatic cancer. The experimental results show shape prediction considering relationships among multiple organs can be used to predict respiratory motion and deformation from digitally reconstructed radiographs with clinically acceptable accuracy

Construction of Shape Atlas for Abdominal Organs using Three-Dimensional Mesh Variational Autoencoder

2023 45th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC), 24-27 July 2023, Sydney, AustraliaA model that represents the shapes and positions of organs or skeletal structures with a small number of parameters may be expected to have a wide range of clinical applications, such as radiotherapy and surgical guidance. However, because soft organs vary in shape and position between patients, it is difficult for linear models to reconstruct locally variable shapes, and nonlinear models are prone to overfitting, particularly when the quantity of data is small. The aim of this study was to construct a shape atlas with high accuracy and good generalization performance. We designed a mesh variational autoencoder that can reconstruct both nonlinear shape and position with high accuracy. We validated the trained model for liver meshes of 125 cases, and found that it was possible to reconstruct the positions and shapes with an average accuracy of 4.3 mm for the test data of 19 cases

Chemistry of Cu deposition by Cu(hfac)(tmvs) monitored by Li⁺ ion attachment mass spectrometry

Ion attachment mass spectrometry was used for continuous in situanalysis of coordinated products formed during copperchemical vapor deposition(CuCVD) by Cu(1,1,1,5,5,5-hexafluoroacetylacetonate)(vinyltrimethylsilane) [Cu(hfac)(tmvs)] in a simple tubular reactor. This study of the thermally labile Cu(hfac)(tmvs) demonstrated the utility of this method for detecting molecular ions of labile compounds. The results demonstrate the feasibility of monitoring the deposition chemistry of Cu(hfac)(tmvs) by generating Li⁺ adduct molecular ions by means of the Li⁺ ion attachment technique. The reaction pathways for CuCVD by Cu(hfac)(tmvs) were studied by analysis of the reaction products. H(hfac) and tmvs were identified as the main products when Cu(hfac)tmvs was heated at temperatures ranging from room temperature to 160°C in the reactor. The rate constant for Cu deposition, k (1/s), was determined to be 1.6×10⁶exp(−10.2kcal/molRt).This work was supported in part by The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization NEDO under a fund for Fundamental Technology Research Facilitation Program

Jornalismo, literatura e Haruki Murakami : estudo do narrador em underground

Esta monografia visa a estudar o narrador de Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, de Haruki Murakami. Lançado em 1997, o livro reúne entrevistas feitas pelo escritor japonês com vítimas do ataque de gás sarin arquitetado e posto em prática no metrô de Tóquio pela organização religiosa Aum Shinrikyo em 1995. Primeiramente, foi feita uma revisão bibliográfica a fim de compor uma breve biografia a partir das reflexões de um dos principais tradutores das obras de Murakami para o inglês e de estudiosos de cultura e literatura japonesas, cuja razão de ser é contextualizar e apresentar o objeto deste estudo. Em seguida, reunimos ponderações de Borges (2013), Bulhões(2006), Cosson (2001) e Ponte (2005) para apresentar os movimentos de aproximação vividos por jornalismo e literatura no decorrer da história, que levaram ao Jornalismo Literário, gênero híbrido de cujas expressões mais notáveis podem-se destacar o New Journalism e o romance-reportagem, que responsáveis por abrir espaço para o surgimento de criações como Underground. Para tanto, optamos por adotar como metolodogia a análise interna da narrativa, também chamado de narratologia. Apoiamo-nos em Culler (1999) para pincelar alguns elementos básicos da teoria da narrativa e da narratologia e, após, apresentamos as ferramentas esquematizadas por Reuter (2002) para a análise da organização interna de uma narrativa, as quais aplicamos nas histórias de duas personagens-femininas de Underground, a fim de investigar os modos e instâncias narrativos utilizados pelo narrador-Murakami.This monograph aims to study the narrator in Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, by Haruki Murakami. First published in 1997, the book gathers interviews conducted by the Japanese writer with victims of the a sarin gas attack architecture and put into practice by members of the religious organization Aum Shinrikyo in 1995. First, a bibliographical review was made in order to compose a brief biography from the reflections of one of the main translators of the works of Murakami into English and of scholars of Japanese culture and literature, whose goal is to contextualize and introduce the object of this study. Afterwards, we gathered weightings from Borges (2013), Bulhões (2006), Cosson (2001) and Ponte (2005) to present the movements of approximation between journalism and literature that led to Literary Journalism, a hybrid genre whose most notable expressions worth mentioning are the New Journalism and the nonfiction novel, responsible for making space for the emergence of creations such as Underground. For that purpose, we chose to adopt as methodological approach the internal analysis of the narrative, also known as narratology. Supported by Culler (1999), we went through some of the basic elements of narrative theory and narratology, and then presented the tools outlined by Reuter (2002) for the analysis of the internal organization of a narrative, which we applied in excerpts from Undergroud to investigate the modes and instances used by the narrator-Murakami to construct the narratives of two female characters

Mixed families: an ethnographic study of Japanese/British families in Edinburgh

Studies on mixed race and/or ethnicity families have tended to focus on the child’s struggle with identity. Although this topic is very important, in order to better understand how mixed families function as a whole, and how mixed children are socialised, my thesis explored the entire family, with a focus on the parents and kin. Specifically, I looked at the negotiations that take place between the Japanese mothers’ and British fathers’ differences, and the way in which culture, including customs, beliefs, and preferences, are then shared and transmitted to the mixed children. This qualitative, ethnographic study focused on twelve Japanese/British families in Edinburgh. Because socialisation and the transmission of culture tend to happen in the midst of doing mixed family, the following areas of the mixed families’ lives were explored: everyday lived culture, language choices, and food habits. When examining the foods eaten and the languages spoken by the mixed families, it seems that the mixed families are attempting to transmit both their linguistic and culinary heritages to their children, with their aspiration being to raise bilingual, bicultural children. In addition, this study explored the role that extended family and friends play in the lives of the mixed families as they attempt to form their new mixed family culture. The data collection was the result of 26 months of fieldwork consisting of participant observation at three local Japanese mother/toddler playgroups, interviews with both parents and extended family members, and home observations. Some major findings from the study were that, while mothers still tend to carry a heavier burden when it comes to everyday parenting, particularly in the domestic sphere, the fathers were also found to be involved in many aspects of everyday parenting. Additionally, both maternal and paternal kin were also found to offer the mixed families various types of support, with the most frequently mentioned types of support being practical and emotional. Further, mixed families were found to complicate this idea of ‘national culture’ because nationality is not tied to a culture. In this way, the transmission of culture becomes more fluid, allowing the British man to transmit “Japanese” customs and the Japanese woman to share her “British” interests with her children. Finally, while focusing on the intergenerational transmission of culture from parent to child, we find that children do indeed have agency in the transmission of culture, as they are the ones who ultimately decide whether their cultural heritage is a gift or a burden. The study thus offers a nuanced picture of mixed family lives in contemporary UK

Statistical deformation reconstruction using multi-organ shape features for pancreatic cancer localization

Respiratory motion and the associated deformations of abdominal organs and tumors are essential information in clinical applications. However, inter- and intra-patient multi-organ deformations are complex and have not been statistically formulated, whereas single organ deformations have been widely studied. In this paper, we introduce a multi-organ deformation library and its application to deformation reconstruction based on the shape features of multiple abdominal organs. Statistical multi-organ motion/deformation models of the stomach, liver, left and right kidneys, and duodenum were generated by shape matching their region labels defined on four-dimensional computed tomography images. A total of 250 volumes were measured from 25 pancreatic cancer patients. This paper also proposes a per-region-based deformation learning using the non-linear kernel model to predict the displacement of pancreatic cancer for adaptive radiotherapy. The experimental results show that the proposed concept estimates deformations better than general per-patient-based learning models and achieves a clinically acceptable estimation error with a mean distance of 1.2 ± 0.7 mm and a Hausdorff distance of 4.2 ± 2.3 mm throughout the respiratory motion

2D/3D Deep Image Registration by Learning 3D Displacement Fields for Abdominal Organs

Deformable registration of two-dimensional/three-dimensional (2D/3D) images of abdominal organs is a complicated task because the abdominal organs deform significantly and their contours are not detected in two-dimensional X-ray images. We propose a supervised deep learning framework that achieves 2D/3D deformable image registration between 3D volumes and single-viewpoint 2D projected images. The proposed method learns the translation from the target 2D projection images and the initial 3D volume to 3D displacement fields. In experiments, we registered 3D-computed tomography (CT) volumes to digitally reconstructed radiographs generated from abdominal 4D-CT volumes. For validation, we used 4D-CT volumes of 35 cases and confirmed that the 3D-CT volumes reflecting the nonlinear and local respiratory organ displacement were reconstructed. The proposed method demonstrate the compatible performance to the conventional methods with a dice similarity coefficient of 91.6 \% for the liver region and 85.9 \% for the stomach region, while estimating a significantly more accurate CT values

Combinatorial motif analysis of regulatory gene expression in Mafb deficient macrophages

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Deficiency of the transcription factor MafB, which is normally expressed in macrophages, can underlie cellular dysfunction associated with a range of autoimmune diseases and arteriosclerosis. MafB has important roles in cell differentiation and regulation of target gene expression; however, the mechanisms of this regulation and the identities of other transcription factors with which MafB interacts remain uncertain. Bioinformatics methods provide a valuable approach for elucidating the nature of these interactions with transcriptional regulatory elements from a large number of DNA sequences. In particular, identification of patterns of co-occurrence of regulatory <it>cis</it>-elements (motifs) offers a robust approach.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here, the directional relationships among several functional motifs were evaluated using the Log-linear Graphical Model (LGM) after extraction and search for evolutionarily conserved motifs. This analysis highlighted GATA-1 motifs and 5’AT-rich half Maf recognition elements (MAREs) in promoter regions of 18 genes that were down-regulated in <it>Mafb</it> deficient macrophages. GATA-1 motifs and MafB motifs could regulate expression of these genes in both a negative and positive manner, respectively. The validity of this conclusion was tested with data from a luciferase assay that used a <it>C1qa</it> promoter construct carrying both the GATA-1 motifs and MAREs. GATA-1 was found to inhibit the activity of the <it>C1qa</it> promoter with the GATA-1 motifs and MafB motifs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These observations suggest that both the GATA-1 motifs and MafB motifs are important for lineage specific expression of <it>C1qa</it>. In addition, these findings show that analysis of combinations of evolutionarily conserved motifs can be successfully used to identify patterns of gene regulation.</p

Designing a trust chain for a thin client on a live Linux cd

CD-boot Linuxi is a live Linux environment, which is easy to use because it is not installed in the hard disk, but simply boots directly from a CD. This helps protect the sensitive information because a clean environment can be prepared at boot time. To insure this environment protects sensitive information, we adapted the trusted computing technology to define a trustworthy environment

X-ray2Shape: Reconstruction of 3D Liver Shape from a Single 2D Projection Image

[2020 42nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC), 20-24 July 2020, Montreal, QC, Canada]Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners measure three-dimensional (3D) images of patients. However, only low-dimensional local two-dimensional (2D) images may be obtained during surgery or radiotherapy. Although computer vision techniques have shown that 3D shapes can be estimated from multiple 2D images, shape reconstruction from a single 2D image such as an endoscopic image or an X-ray image remains a challenge. In this study, we propose X-ray2Shape, which permits a deep learning-based 3D organ mesh to be reconstructed from a single 2D projection image. The method learns the mesh deformation from a mean template and deep features computed from the individual projection images. Experiments with organ meshes and digitally reconstructed radiograph (DRR) images of abdominal regions were performed to confirm the estimation performance of the methods