Advanced ablation strategies for management of post-surgical atrial arrhythmias.

Post-surgical arrhythmias include a wide range of arrhythmias occurring late after cardiac surgery and represent a complex substrate for catheter ablation either because of extended scar and remodeling or because of limited access to the area of interest. Novel image integration and ablation tools have made the catheter ablation in this population both feasible and successful. We review a structured approach to catheter ablation of post-surgical atrial arrhythmias in various patient cohorts including the most common congenital heart defects

Use of Case Histories to Enhance Practical Geotechnical Engineering

Mathematical models are constructed to describe the behavior of engineering systems in quantitative terms. During conceptualization stage of modelling several valid assumptions have to be made so as to make the model predict the behavior of the system as accurately as possible. Refinement of mathematical models need feed back from practice. Many practical cases are of interest in updating and enhancing quantitative judgment of geo-technical systems behavior. This paper envisages to present a few interesting cases where the situation forced true synthesis of theory and practice for innovation and advancement of practical geo-technical engineering

The structural behavior of higher strength concrete

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 H57Master of Scienc

See Through the Fog: Curriculum Learning with Progressive Occlusion in Medical Imaging

In recent years, deep learning models have revolutionized medical image interpretation, offering substantial improvements in diagnostic accuracy. However, these models often struggle with challenging images where critical features are partially or fully occluded, which is a common scenario in clinical practice. In this paper, we propose a novel curriculum learning-based approach to train deep learning models to handle occluded medical images effectively. Our method progressively introduces occlusion, starting from clear, unobstructed images and gradually moving to images with increasing occlusion levels. This ordered learning process, akin to human learning, allows the model to first grasp simple, discernable patterns and subsequently build upon this knowledge to understand more complicated, occluded scenarios. Furthermore, we present three novel occlusion synthesis methods, namely Wasserstein Curriculum Learning (WCL), Information Adaptive Learning (IAL), and Geodesic Curriculum Learning (GCL). Our extensive experiments on diverse medical image datasets demonstrate substantial improvements in model robustness and diagnostic accuracy over conventional training methodologies.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Selective Inhibition of Human Monoamine Oxidase B by Acacetin 7-Methyl Ether Isolated from Turnera diffusa (Damiana)

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Background: Bodybuilding supplements can cause a profound cholestatic syndrome. Aim: To describe the drug-Induced liver injury network\u27s experience with liver injury due to bodybuilding supplements. Methods: Liver injury pattern, severity and outcomes, potential genetic associations, and exposure to anabolic steroids by product analysis were analysed in prospectively enrolled subjects with bodybuilding supplement-induced liver injury with causality scores of probable or higher. Results: Forty-four males (mean age 33 years) developed liver injury with a median latency of 73 days. Forty-one per cent presented with hepatocellular pattern of liver injury as defined by the R \u3e 5 ([Fold elevation of ALT] ÷ [Fold elevation of Alk Phos] (mean, range = 6.4, 0.5-31.4, n = 42) despite all presenting with clinical features of cholestatic liver injury (100% with jaundice and 84% with pruritus). Liver biopsy (59% of subjects) demonstrated a mild hepatitis and profound cholestasis in most without bile duct injury, loss or fibrosis. Seventy-one per cent were hospitalised, and none died or required liver transplantation. In some, chemical analysis revealed anabolic steroid controlled substances not listed on the label. No enrichment of genetic variants associated with cholestatic syndromes was found, although mutations in ABCB11 (present in up to 20%) were significantly different than in ethnically matched controls. Conclusions: Patients with bodybuilding supplements liver injury uniformly presented with cholestatic injury, which slowly resolved. The ingested products often contained anabolic steroids not identified on the label, and no enrichment in genetic variants was found, indicating a need for additional studies

Transcending Grids: Point Clouds and Surface Representations Powering Neurological Processing

In healthcare, accurately classifying medical images is vital, but conventional methods often hinge on medical data with a consistent grid structure, which may restrict their overall performance. Recent medical research has been focused on tweaking the architectures to attain better performance without giving due consideration to the representation of data. In this paper, we present a novel approach for transforming grid based data into its higher dimensional representations, leveraging unstructured point cloud data structures. We first generate a sparse point cloud from an image by integrating pixel color information as spatial coordinates. Next, we construct a hypersurface composed of points based on the image dimensions, with each smooth section within this hypersurface symbolizing a specific pixel location. Polygonal face construction is achieved using an adjacency tensor. Finally, a dense point cloud is generated by densely sampling the constructed hypersurface, with a focus on regions of higher detail. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated on a publicly accessible brain tumor dataset, achieving significant improvements over existing classification techniques. This methodology allows the extraction of intricate details from the original image, opening up new possibilities for advanced image analysis and processing tasks

Effect of corrosion on flexural bond strength

Corrosion is one of the main causes affecting durability of structures. Corrosion effects on structures cannot be ignored and replaced. To understand the performance of structures there is a need to study the rate at which different corrosion levels occur. Hence the present investigation has been taken up to study the behaviour of NBS (National Bureau of Standard) beam specimens made up of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) and Portland Pozzolona Cement (PPC) concrete matrix were subjected to accelerated corrosion for different corrosion levels of 2.5 % to 10 % at 2.5 % interval. Results are compared with those for control beam specimen. It is observed that bond stress value decreases with the increase in corrosion levels. Also corrosion leads to the decline of load carrying capacity

Marfan syndrome and pregnancy: maternal and neonatal outcomes

Objective To report outcomes in a recent series of pregnancies in women with Marfan syndrome (MFS). Design Retrospective case note review. Setting Tertiary referral unit (Chelsea and Westminster and Royal Brompton Hospitals). Sample Twenty-nine pregnancies in 21 women with MFS between 1995 and 2010. Methods Multidisciplinary review of case records. Main outcome measures Maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity of patients with MFS and healthy controls. Results There were no maternal deaths. Significant cardiac complications occurred in five pregnancies (17%): one woman experienced a type–A aortic dissection; two women required cardiac surgery within 6 months of delivery; and a further two women developed impaired left ventricular function during the pregnancy. Women with MFS were also more likely to have obstetric complications (OR 3.29, 95% CI 1.30–8.34), the most frequent of which was postpartum haemorrhage (OR 8.46, 95% CI 2.52–28.38). There were no perinatal deaths, although babies born to mothers with MFS were delivered significantly earlier than those born to the control group (median 39 versus 40 weeks of gestation, Mann–Whitney U–test, P = 0.04). These babies were also significantly more likely to be small for gestational age (24% in the MFS group versus 6% in the controls; OR 4.95, 95% CI 1.58–15.55). Conclusions Pregnancy in women with MFS continues to be associated with significant rates of maternal, fetal, and neonatal complications. Effective pre-pregnancy counselling and meticulous surveillance during pregnancy, delivery, and the puerperium by an experienced multidisciplinary team are warranted for women with MFS