Breast Cancer MRI Classification Based on Fractional Entropy Image Enhancement and Deep Feature Extraction

سرطان الثدي يعتبر واحد من الامراض القاتلة الشائعة بين النساء في جميع أنحاء العالم. والتشخيص المبكر لسرطان الثدي الكشف المبكر من أهم استراتيجيات الوقاية الثانوية. نظرًا لاستخدام التصوير الطبي على نطاق واسع في تشخيص العديد من الأمراض المزمنة ومراقبتها، فقد تم اقتراح العديد من خوارزميات معالجة الصور على مر السنين لزيادة مجال التصوير الطبي بحيث تصبح عملية التشخيص أكثر دقة وكفاءة. تقدم هذه الدراسة خوارزمية جديدة لاستخراج الخواص العميقة من نوعين من صور الرنين المغناطيسي T2W-TSE و STIR MRI كمدخلات للشبكات العصبية العميقة المقترحة والتي تُستخدم لاستخراج الخواص للتمييز بين فحوصات التصوير بالرنين المغناطيسي للثدي المرضية والصحية. في هذه الخوارزمية، تتم معالجة فحوصات التصوير بالرنين المغناطيسي للثدي مسبقًا قبل خطوة استخراج الخواص لتقليل تأثيرات الاختلافات بين شرائح التصوير بالرنين المغناطيسي، وفصل الثدي الايمن عن الايسر، بالإضافة الى عزل خلفية الصور. وقد كانت أقصى دقة تم تحقيقها لتصنيف مجموعة بيانات تضم 326 شريحة تصوير بالرنين المغناطيسي للثدي 98.77٪. يبدو أن النموذج يتسم بالكفاءة والأداء ويمكن بالتالي اعتباره مرشحًا للتطبيق في بيئة سريرية.Disease diagnosis with computer-aided methods has been extensively studied and applied in diagnosing and monitoring of several chronic diseases. Early detection and risk assessment of breast diseases based on clinical data is helpful for doctors to make early diagnosis and monitor the disease progression. The purpose of this study is to exploit the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) in discriminating breast MRI scans into pathological and healthy. In this study, a fully automated and efficient deep features extraction algorithm that exploits the spatial information obtained from both T2W-TSE and STIR MRI sequences to discriminate between pathological and healthy breast MRI scans. The breast MRI scans are preprocessed prior to the feature extraction step to enhance and preserve the fine details of the breast MRI scans boundaries by using fractional integral entropy FIE algorithm, to reduce the effects of the intensity variations between MRI slices, and finally to separate the right and left breast regions by exploiting the symmetry information. The obtained features are classified using a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network classifier. Subsequently, all extracted features significantly improves the performance of the LSTM network to precisely discriminate between pathological and healthy cases. The maximum achieved accuracy for classifying the collected dataset comprising 326 T2W-TSE images and 326 STIR images is 98.77%. The experimental results demonstrate that FIE enhancement method improve the performance of CNN in classifying breast MRI scans. The proposed model appears to be efficient and might represent a useful diagnostic tool in the evaluation of MRI breast scans

Foot-and-mouth disease surveillance using pooled milk on a large-scale dairy farm in an endemic setting

Pooled milk is used for the surveillance of several diseases of livestock. Previous studies demonstrated the detection of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) in the milk of infected animals at high dilutions, and consequently, the collection of pooled milk samples could be used to enhance FMD surveillance. This study evaluated pooled milk for FMDV surveillance on a large-scale dairy farm that experienced two FMD outbreaks caused by the A/ASIA/G-VII and O/ME-SA/Ind-2001d lineages, despite regular vaccination and strict biosecurity practices. FMDV RNA was detected in 42 (5.7%) of the 732 pooled milk samples, and typing information was concordant with diagnostic reports of clinical disease. The FMDV positive milk samples were temporally clustered around reports of new clinical cases, but with a wider distribution. For further investigation, a model was established to predict real-time RT-PCR (rRT-PCR) C values using individual cattle movement data, clinical disease records and virus excretion data from previous experimental studies. The model explained some of the instances where there were positive results by rRT-PCR, but no new clinical cases and suggested that subclinical infection occurred during the study period. Further studies are required to investigate the effect of vaccination on FMDV excretion in milk, and to evaluate more representative sampling methods. However, the results from this pilot study indicate that testing pooled milk by rRT-PCR may be valuable for FMD surveillance and has provided evidence of subclinical virus infection in vaccinated herds that could be important in the epidemiology of FMD in endemic countries where vaccination is used. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2020 Armson, Gubbins, Mioulet, Qasim, King and Lyons.

Design and implementation home security system and monitoring by using wireless sensor networks WSN/internet of things IOT

The dramatic advancments on communication and networking technologies have led to the emergence of Internet-of-Things (IoT). IoT technology has opened the door for various applications. In particular, the home automation was one of the common applications that took the advantage of IoT. Several research efforts have addressed the home automation system using IoT covering wide range of functionalities. One of the concerning tasks is providing a secure system that can give alarms for suspicious activities within the house. This paper presents a secure house system based on IoT where several activities are being sensed and detected. Specifically, gas, humidity, body temperature and motion have been considered within the sensing based on two main types of micro-controller including Arduino and Raspberry Pi. Consequentially, an Android prototype has bene developed in order to give an interactive interface for warning the house owner regarding any suscpicious activities. Results of simulation demonstrated the efficancy of the proposed syste

A comprehensive study of distributed Denial-of-Service attack with the detection techniques

With the dramatic evolution in networks nowadays, an equivalent growth of challenges has been depicted toward implementing and deployment of such networks. One of the serious challenges is the security where wide range of attacks would threat these networks. Denial-of-Service (DoS) is one of the common attacks that targets several types of networks in which a huge amount of information is being flooded into a specific server for the purpose of turning of such server. Many research studies have examined the simulation of networks in order to observe the behavior of DoS. However, the variety of its types hinders the process of configuring the DoS attacks. In particular, the Distributed DoS (DDoS) is considered to be the most challenging threat to various networks. Hence, this paper aims to accommodate a comprehensive simulation in order to figure out and detect DDoS attacks. Using the well-known simulator technique of NS-2, the experiments showed that different types of DDoS have been characterized, examined and detected. This implies the efficacy of the comprehensive simulation proposed by this study

Genome-Wide Diversity of MADS-Box Genes in Bread Wheat is Associated with its Rapid Global Adaptability

MADS-box gene family members play multifarious roles in regulating the growth and development of crop plants and hold enormous promise for bolstering grain yield potential under changing global environments. Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a key stable food crop around the globe. Until now, the available information concerning MADS-box genes in the wheat genome has been insufficient. Here, a comprehensive genome-wide analysis identified 300 high confidence MADS-box genes from the publicly available reference genome of wheat. Comparative phylogenetic analyses with Arabidopsis and rice MADS-box genes classified the wheat genes into 16 distinct subfamilies. Gene duplications were mainly identified in subfamilies containing unbalanced homeologs, pointing towards a potential mechanism for gene family expansion. Moreover, a more rapid evolution was inferred for M-type genes, as compared with MIKC-type genes, indicating their significance in understanding the evolutionary history of the wheat genome. We speculate that subfamily-specific distal telomeric duplications in unbalanced homeologs facilitate the rapid adaptation of wheat to changing environments. Furthermore, our in-silico expression data strongly proposed MADS-box genes as active guardians of plants against pathogen insurgency and harsh environmental conditions. In conclusion, we provide an entire complement of MADS-box genes identified in the wheat genome that could accelerate functional genomics efforts and possibly facilitate bridging gaps between genotype-to-phenotype relationships through fine-tuning of agronomically important traits

Prediction Models for Modified Pavement Mixtures by Reclaimed Asphalt in Terms of Durability Indicators

The asphaltic pavement is often subjected to various types of distress during the service life caused by excessive load, construction practices, deficient materials, and environmental conditions. A lot of pavements may occur due to moisture damage because of the presence of water on the pavement's surface, which affects the pavement's service life. It needs periodic maintenance, which requires materials and money. So many countries take the economic side by reusing old, damaged pavement and mixed with new materials in addition to its sustainable benefits, the old material called reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP). This study examines the effect of adding RAP on durability indicators, including tensile strength ratio, retained Marshall Stability, and durability Index, in addition to prediction statistical models for reclaimed asphalt pavement mixtures in terms of durability indicators. To achieve the goals of this study, the asphalt mixtures are designed according to the superpave system; the samples are compacted by a superpave gyratory compactor with a diameter of 100 mm and prepared with (6%, 13%, 19%, and 25%) RAP content with three conditioning periods of (1, 3, and 7) days and two aging periods (short term aging for loose mixture at 135˚C for 4 hours long term aging for 120 hours at 85˚C), and two testing temperature of 25˚C and 60˚C. The results indicated that stability increased as the RAP content increased compared to the control mix, and indirect tensile strength increased with RAP addition for both aging periods. Also, results illustrated that the tensile strength ratio for specimens tested at 25˚C is higher than that tested at 60˚C temperature

Design and implement WSN/IoT smart parking management system using microcontroller

With the dramatic expansion of new networks such as Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and Internet-of-Things (IoT), tremendous opportunities have been emerged to incorporate such technologies for valuable tasks. One of these tasks is the smart car parking where there is an imperative demand to manage the parkings in various facilities which may help drivers to save their time. Several research studies have addressed this task using wide range of approaches. However, the energy consumption is still a serious concern. This paper proposes a smart car parking based on cloud-based approach along with variety of sensors. Passive Infrared Sensors (PIRs) have been used to sense the object motion. While Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) sensors have been utilized to sense the light of the parking alarm and display inmformation regarding the occupied and non-occupied parking lots. Finally, multi-micro controller of Arduino have been exploited in order to transmit the information collected to the server. Finally, a prototype Android application has been developed in order to recieve the infromation from the server. Results of simulation showed the efficacy of the proposed method

Agitation conditions for the culture and detachment of hMSCs from microcarriers in multiple bioreactor platforms

In our recent work in different bioreactors up to 2.5L in scale, we have successfully cultured hMSCs using the minimum agitator speed required for complete microcarrier suspension, N JS. In addition, we also reported a scaleable protocol for the detachment from microcarriers in spinner flasks of hMSCs from two donors. The essence of the protocol is the use of a short period of intense agitation in the presence of enzymes such that the cells are detached; but once detachment is achieved, the cells are smaller than the Kolmogorov scale of turbulence and hence not damaged. Here, the same approach has been effective for culture at N JS and detachment in-situ in 15mL ambr™ bioreactors, 100mL spinner flasks and 250mL Dasgip bioreactors. In these experiments, cells from four different donors were used along with two types of microcarrier with and without surface coatings (two types), four different enzymes and three different growth media (with and without serum), a total of 22 different combinations. In all cases after detachment, the cells were shown to retain their desired quality attributes and were able to proliferate. This agitation strategy with respect to culture and harvest therefore offers a sound basis for a wide range of scales of operation

Culture of human mesenchymal stem cells on microcarriers in a 5 l stirred-tank bioreactor

This article was published in the journal, Biotechnology Letters [© Springer Science+Business Media] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10529-013-1211-9For the first time, fully functional human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) have been cultured at the litre-scale on microcarriers in a stirred-tank 5 l bioreactor, (2.5 l working volume) and were harvested via a potentially scalable detachment protocol that allowed for the successful detachment of hMSCs from the cell-microcarrier suspension. Over 12 days, the dissolved O2 concentration was >45 % of saturation and the pH between 7.2 and 6.7 giving a maximum cell density in the 5 l bioreactor of 1.7 × 105 cells/ml; this represents >sixfold expansion of the hMSCs, equivalent to that achievable from 65 fully-confluent T-175 flasks. During this time, the average specific O2 uptake of the cells in the 5 l bioreactor was 8.1 fmol/cell h and, in all cases, the 5 l bioreactors outperformed the equivalent 100 ml spinner-flasks run in parallel with respect to cell yields and growth rates. In addition, yield coefficients, specific growth rates and doubling times were calculated for all systems. Neither the upstream nor downstream bioprocessing unit operations had a discernible effect on cell quality with the harvested cells retaining their immunophenotypic markers, key morphological features and differentiation capacity

Humoral Immunogenicity and Efficacy of a Single Dose of ChAdOx1 MERS Vaccine Candidate in Dromedary Camels

MERS-CoV seronegative and seropositive camels received a single intramuscular dose of ChAdOx1 MERS, a replication-deficient adenoviral vectored vaccine expressing MERS-CoV spike protein, with further groups receiving control vaccinations. Infectious camels with active naturally acquired MERS-CoV infection, were co-housed with the vaccinated camels at a ratio of 1:2 (infected:vaccinated); nasal discharge and virus titres were monitored for 14 days. Overall, the vaccination reduced virus shedding and nasal discharge (p = 0.0059 and p = 0.0274, respectively). Antibody responses in seropositive camels were enhancedby the vaccine; these camels had a higher average age than seronegative. Older seronegative camels responded more strongly to vaccination than younger animals; and neutralising antibodies were detected in nasal swabs. Further work is required to optimise vaccine regimens for younger seronegative camels