Bioavailable Trace Metals in Neurological Diseases

Medical treatment in Wilson’s disease includes chelators (d-penicillamine and trientine) or zinc salts that have to be maintain all the lifelong. This pharmacological treatment is categorised into two phases; the first being a de-coppering phase and the second a maintenance one. The best therapeutic approach remains controversial, as only a few non-controlled trials have compared these treatments. During the initial phase, progressive increase of chelators’ doses adjusted to exchangeable copper and urinary copper might help to avoid neurological deterioration. Liver transplantation is indicated in acute fulminant liver failure and decompensated cirrhosis; in cases of neurologic deterioration, it must be individually discussed. During the maintenance phase, the most important challenge is to obtain a good adherence to lifelong medical therapy. Neurodegenerative diseases that lead to a mislocalisation of iron can be caused by a culmination of localised overload (pro-oxidant siderosis) and localised deficiency (metabolic distress). A new therapeutic concept with conservative iron chelation rescues iron-overloaded neurons by scavenging labile iron and, by delivering this chelated metal to endogenous apo-transferrin, allows iron redistribution to avoid systemic loss of iron

Detecting and Correcting Shadows in Urban Point Clouds and Image Collections

International audienceLiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) acquisition is a widespread method for measuring urban scenes, be it a small town neighborhood or an entire city. It is even more interesting when this acquisition is coupled with a collection of pictures registered with the data, permitting to recover the color information of the points. Yet, this added color can be perturbed by shadows that are very dependent on the sun direction and weather conditions during the acquisition. In this paper, we focus on the problem of automatically detecting and correcting the shadows from the LiDAR data by exploiting both the images and the point set laser reflectance. Building on the observation that shadow boundaries are characterized by both a significant color change and a stable laser reflectance, we propose to first detect shadow boundaries in the point set and then segment ground shadows using graph cuts in the image. Finally using a simplified illumination model we correct the shadows directly on the colored point sets. This joint exploitation of both the laser point set and the images renders our approach robust and efficient, avoiding user interaction