Following the Science: the role of the academic medical center in the COVID-19 pandemic

This article reviews the experience and role of an academic medical center in a response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Comparative Effectiveness of Tumor Response Assessment Methods: Standard of Care Versus Computer-Assisted Response Evaluation

Purpose To compare the effectiveness of metastatic tumor response evaluation with computed tomography using computer-assisted versus manual methods. Materials and Methods In this institutional review board–approved, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act–compliant retrospective study, 11 readers from 10 different institutions independently categorized tumor response according to three different therapeutic response criteria by using paired baseline and initial post-therapy computed tomography studies from 20 randomly selected patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma who were treated with sunitinib as part of a completed phase III multi-institutional study. Images were evaluated with a manual tumor response evaluation method (standard of care) and with computer-assisted response evaluation (CARE) that included stepwise guidance, interactive error identification and correction methods, automated tumor metric extraction, calculations, response categorization, and data and image archiving. A crossover design, patient randomization, and 2-week washout period were used to reduce recall bias. Comparative effectiveness metrics included error rate and mean patient evaluation time. Results The standard-of-care method, on average, was associated with one or more errors in 30.5% (6.1 of 20) of patients, whereas CARE had a 0.0% (0.0 of 20) error rate (P < .001). The most common errors were related to data transfer and arithmetic calculation. In patients with errors, the median number of error types was 1 (range, 1 to 3). Mean patient evaluation time with CARE was twice as fast as the standard-of-care method (6.4 minutes v 13.1 minutes; P < .001). Conclusion CARE reduced errors and time of evaluation, which indicated better overall effectiveness than manual tumor response evaluation methods that are the current standard of care

Generating Bessel beams with broad depth-of-field by using phase-only acoustic holograms

[EN] We report zero-th and high-order acoustic Bessel beams with broad depth-of-field generated using acoustic holograms. While the transverse field distribution of Bessel beams generated using traditional passive methods is correctly described by a Bessel function, these methods present a common drawback: the axial distribution of the field is not constant, as required for ideal Bessel beams. In this work, we experimentally, numerically and theoretically report acoustic truncated Bessel beams of flat-intensity along their axis in the ultrasound regime using phase-only holograms. In particular, the beams present a uniform field distribution showing an elongated focal length of about 40 wavelengths, while the transverse width of the beam remains smaller than 0.7 wavelengths. The proposed acoustic holograms were compared with 3D-printed fraxicons, a blazed version of axicons. The performance of both phase-only holograms and fraxicons is studied and we found that both lenses produce Bessel beams in a wide range of frequencies. In addition, high-order Bessel beam were generated. We report first order Bessel beams that show a clear phase dislocation along their axis and a vortex with single topological charge. The proposed method may have potential applications in ultrasonic imaging, biomedical ultrasound and particle manipulation applications using passive lenses.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Innovation (MINECO) through Project TEC2016-80976-R. NJ and SJ acknowledge financial support from Generalitat Valenciana through grants APOSTD/2017/042, ACIF/2017/045 and GV/2018/11. FC acknowledges financial support from Agencia Valenciana de la Innovacio through grant INNCON00/18/9 and European Regional Development Fund (IDIFEDER/2018/022).Jiménez-Gambín, S.; Jimenez, N.; Benlloch Baviera, JM.; Camarena Femenia, F. (2019). Generating Bessel beams with broad depth-of-field by using phase-only acoustic holograms. Scientific Reports. 9:1-13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-56369-zS1139Durnin, J. Exact solutions for nondiffracting beams. i. the scalar theory. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 4, 651 (1987).Durnin, J., Miceli, J. Jr & Eberly, J. Diffraction-free beams. Physical review letters 58, 1499 (1987).Chu, X. Analytical study on the self-healing property of Bessel beam. Eur. Phys. J. D 66, 259 (2012).McLeod, E., Hopkins, A. B. & Arnold, C. B. Multiscale Bessel beams generated by a tunable acoustic gradient index of refraction lens. Opt. Lett. 31, 3155 (2006).Li, Z., Alici, K. B., Caglayan, H. & Ozbay, E. Generation of an axially asymmetric Bessel-like beam from a metallic subwavelength aperture. Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 143901 (2009).Fahrbach, F. & Rohrbach, A. Propagation stability of self-reconstructing Bessel beams enables contrast-enhanced imaging in thick media. Nat. Commun. 3, 632 (2011).Lu, J.-y, Zou, H. & Greenleaf, J. F. Biomedical ultrasound beam forming. Ultrasound in medicine & biology 20, 403–428 (1994).Marston, P. L. Scattering of a Bessel beam by a sphere. J. Acous. Soc. Am. 121, 753 (2007).Marston, P. L. Scattering of a Bessel beam by a sphere: Ii. helicoidal case and spherical shell example. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 124, 2905–2910 (2008).Lu, J. & Greenleaf, F. Ultrasonic nondiffracting transducer for medical imaging. IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelec. Freq. Contr. 37, 438 (1990).Lu, J.-Y. & Greenleaf, J. F. Pulse-echo imaging using a nondiffracting beam transducer. Ultrasound in medicine & biology 17, 265–281 (1991).Lu, J.-y, Song, T.-K., Kinnick, R. R. & Greenleaf, J. F. In vitro and in vivo real-time imaging with ultrasonic limited diffraction beams. IEEE transactions on medical imaging 12, 819–829 (1993).Lu, J.-y, Xu, X.-L., Zou, H. & Greenleaf, J. F. Application of Bessel beam for doppler velocity estimation. IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control 42, 649–662 (1995).Nabavizadeh, A., Greenleaf, J. F., Fatemi, M. & Urban, M. W. Optimized shear wave generation using hybrid beamforming methods. Ultrasound in medicine & biology 40, 188–199 (2014).Marston, P. L. Axial radiation force of a Bessel beam on a sphere and direction reversal of the force. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 120, 3518–3524 (2006).Marston, P. L. Negative axial radiation forces on solid spheres and shells in a Bessel beam. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 122, 3162–3165 (2007).Marston, P. L. Radiation force of a helicoidal Bessel beam on a sphere. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 125, 3539–3547 (2009).Thomas, J.-L. & Marchiano, R. Pseudo angular momentum and topological charge conservation for nonlinear acoustical vortices. Physical review letters 91, 244302 (2003).Volke-Sepúlveda, K., Santillán, A. O. & Boullosa, R. R. Transfer of angular momentum to matter from acoustical vortices in free space. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 024302 (2008).Zhang, L. & Marston, P. L. Geometrical interpretation of negative radiation forces of acoustical Bessel beams on spheres. Physical Review E 84, 035601 (2011).Courtney, C. R. et al. Dexterous manipulation of microparticles using Bessel-function acoustic pressure fields. Applied Physics Letters 102, 123508 (2013).Hong, Z., Zhang, J. & Drinkwater, B. W. Observation of orbital angular momentum transfer from Bessel-shaped acoustic vortices to diphasic liquid-microparticle mixtures. Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 214301 (2015).Baresch, D., Thomas, J.-L. &Marchiano, R. Observation of a single-beam gradient force acoustical trap for elastic particles: Acoustical tweezers. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116 (2016).Marzo, A., Caleap, M. & Drinkwater, B. W. Acoustic virtual vortices with tunable orbital angular momentum for trapping of mie particles. Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 044301 (2018).Li, Y. et al. Acoustic radiation torque of an acoustic-vortex spanner exerted on axisymmetric objects. Applied Physics Letters 112, 254101 (2018).Riaud, A., Baudoin, M., Thomas, J.-L. & Matar, O. B. Cyclones and attractive streaming generated by acoustical vortices. Physical Review E 90, 013008 (2014).Shi, C., Dubois, M., Wang, Y. & Zhang, X. High-speed acoustic communication by multiplexing orbital angular momentum. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 7250–7253 (2017).Jiang, X., Liang, B., Cheng, J.-C. & Qiu, C.-W. Twisted acoustics: metasurface-enabled multiplexing and demultiplexing. Advanced Materials 30, 1800257 (2018).Hsu, D., Margetan, F. & Thompson, D. O. Bessel beam ultrasonic transducer: fabrication method and experimental results. Appl. Phys. Lett. 55, 2066 (1989).Campbell, J. A. & Soloway, S. Generation of a nondiffracting beam with frequency-independent beamwidth. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 88, 2467–2477 (1990).Masuyama, H., Yokoyama, T., Nagai, K. & Mizutani, K. Generation of Bessel beam from equiamplitude-driven annular transducer array consisting of a few elements. Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 38, 3080 (1999).Fjield, T., Fan, X. & Hynynen, K. A parametric study of the concentric-ring transducer design for mri guided ultrasound surgery. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 100, 1220 (1996).Chillara, V. K., Pantea, C. & Sinha, D. N. Low-frequency ultrasonic Bessel-like collimated beam generation from radial modes of piezoelectric transducers. Applied Physics Letters 110, 064101 (2017).Burckhardt, C., Hoffmann, H. & Grandchamp, P.-A. Ultrasound axicon: A device for focusing over a large depth. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 54, 1628–1630 (1973).Foster, F., Patterson, M., Arditi, M. & Hunt, J. The conical scanner: a two transducer ultrasound scatter imaging technique. Ultrasonic imaging 3, 62–82 (1981).McLeod, J. H. The axicon: A new type of optical element. J. Opt. Soc. Am. 44, 592 (1954).Arlt, J. & Dholakia, K. Generation of high-order Bessel beams by use of an axicon. Optics Communications 177, 297–301 (2000).Golub, I. Fresnel axicon. Optics letters 31, 1890–1892 (2006).Lirette, R. & Mobley, J. Broadband wave packet dynamics of minimally diffractive ultrasonic fields from axicon and stepped fraxicon lenses. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 146, 103–108 (2019).Jiménez, N. et al. Acoustic Bessel-like beam formation by an axisymmetric grating. Europhys. Lett. 106, 24005 (2014).Xu, Z., Xu, W., Qian, M., Cheng, Q. & Liu, X. A flat acoustic lens to generate a Bessel-like beam. Ultrasonics 80, 66–71 (2017).Li, Y., Liang, B., Gu, Z.-M., Zou, X.-Y. & Cheng, J.-C. Reflected wavefront manipulation based on ultrathin planar acoustic metasurfaces. Scientific Reports 3, 2546 (2013).Nye, J. & Berry, M. Dislocations in wave trains. Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A 336, 165–190 (1974).Jiménez, N. et al. Formation of high-order acoustic Bessel beams by spiral diffraction gratings. Physical Review E 94, 053004 (2016).Wang, T. et al. Particle manipulation with acoustic vortex beam induced by a brass plate with spiral shape structure. Applied Physics Letters 109, 123506 (2016).Jia, Y.-R., Wei, Q., Wu, D.-J., Xu, Z. & Liu, X.-J. Generation of fractional acoustic vortex with a discrete archimedean spiral structure plate. Applied Physics Letters 112, 173501 (2018).Jiménez, N., Romero-Garca, V., Garca-Raffi, L. M., Camarena, F. & Staliunas, K. Sharp acoustic vortex focusing by fresnel-spiral zone plates. Applied Physics Letters 112, 204101 (2018).Baudoin, M. et al. Folding a focalized acoustical vortex on a flat holographic transducer: miniaturized selective acoustical tweezers. Science advances 5, eaav1967 (2019).Muelas-Hurtado, R. D., Ealo, J. L., Pazos-Ospina, J. F. & Volke-Sepúlveda, K. Acoustic analysis of a broadband spiral source for the simultaneous generation of multiple Bessel vortices in air. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 144, 3252–3261 (2018).Muelas-Hurtado, R. D., Ealo, J. L., Pazos-Ospina, J. F. & Volke-Sepúlveda, K. Generation of multiple vortex beam by means of active diffraction gratings. Applied Physics Letters 112, 084101 (2018).Wunenburger, R., Lozano, J. I. V. & Brasselet, E. Acoustic orbital angular momentum transfer to matter by chiral scattering. New Journal of Physics 17, 103022 (2015).Terzi, M., Tsysar, S., Yuldashev, P., Karzova, M. & Sapozhnikov, O. Generation of a vortex ultrasonic beam with a phase plate with an angular dependence of the thickness. Moscow University Physics Bulletin 72, 61–67 (2017).Hefner, B. T. & Marston, P. L. An acoustical helicoidal wave transducer with applications for the alignment of ultrasonic and underwater systems. Jour. Acous. Soc. Am. 106, 3313–3316 (1999).Ealo, J. L., Prieto, J. C. & Seco, F. Airborne ultrasonic vortex generation using flexible ferroelectrets. IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control 58, 1651–1657 (2011).Naify, C. J. et al. Generation of topologically diverse acoustic vortex beams using a compact metamaterial aperture. Applied Physics Letters 108, 223503 (2016).Ye, L. et al. Making sound vortices by metasurfaces. AIP Advances 6, 085007 (2016).Jiang, X., Li, Y., Liang, B., Cheng, J.-C. & Zhang, L. Convert acoustic resonances to orbital angular momentum. Physical review letters 117, 034301 (2016).Esfahlani, H., Lissek, H. & Mosig, J. R. Generation of acoustic helical wavefronts using metasurfaces. Physical Review B 95, 024312 (2017).Jiménez-Gambn, S., Jiménez, N., Benlloch, J. M. & Camarena, F. Holograms to focus arbitrary ultrasonic fields through the skull. Physical Review Applied 12, 014016 (2019).Maimbourg, G., Houdouin, A., Deffieux, T., Tanter, M. & Aubry, J.-F. 3d-printed adaptive acoustic lens as a disruptive technology for transcranial ultrasound therapy using single-element transducers. Physics in Medicine & Biology 63, 025026 (2018).Ferri, M. et al. On the evaluation of the suitability of the materials used to 3d print holographic acoustic lenses to correct transcranial focused ultrasound aberrations. Polymers 11, 1521 (2019).Melde, K., Mark, A. G., Qiu, T. & Fischer, P. Holograms for acoustics. Nature 537, 518 (2016).Brown, M. D., Cox, B. T. & Treeby, B. E. Design of multi-frequency acoustic kinoforms. Applied Physics Letters 111, 244101 (2017).Brown, M., Nikitichev, D., Treeby, B. & Cox, B. Generating arbitrary ultrasound fields with tailored optoacoustic surface profiles. Applied Physics Letters 110, 094102 (2017).Zhu, Y. et al. Fine manipulation of sound via lossy metamaterials with independent and arbitrary reflection amplitude and phase. Nature communications 9, 1632 (2018).Brown, M. D. Phase and amplitude modulation with acoustic holograms. Applied Physics Letters 115, 053701 (2019).Jiménez, N., Romero-Garca, V., Pagneux, V. & Groby, J.-P. Quasiperfect absorption by subwavelength acoustic panels in transmission using accumulation of resonances due to slow sound. Physical Review B 95, 014205 (2017).Tsang, P. W. M. & Poon, T.-C. Novel method for converting digital fresnel hologram to phase-only hologram based on bidirectional error diffusion. Optics Express 21, 23680–23686 (2013).Soret, J. Ueber die durch kreisgitter erzeugten diffractionsphänomene. Annalen der Physik 232, 99–113 (1875).Turunen, J., Vasara, A. & Friberg, A. T. Holographic generation of diffraction-free beams. Applied Optics 27, 3959–3962 (1988).Vasara, A., Turunen, J. & Friberg, A. T. Realization of general nondiffracting beams with computer-generated holograms. JOSA A 6, 1748–1754 (1989).Cunningham, K. B. & Hamilton, M. F. Bessel beams of finite amplitude in absorbing fluids. J. Acous. Soc. Am. 108, 519 (2000).Ding, D. & Y. Lu, J. Higher-order harmonics of limited diffraction Bessel beams. J. Acous. Soc. Am. 107, 1212 (2000).Skeldon, K., Wilson, C., Edgar, M. & Padgett, M. An acoustic spanner and its associated rotational Doppler shift. New J. Phys. 10, 013018 (2008).Wu, J. Acoustical tweezers. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 2140–2143 (1991).Zhang, L. & Marston, P. L. Angular momentum flux of nonparaxial acoustic vortex beams and torques on axisymmetric objects. Physical Review E 84, 065601 (2011).Yoon, C., Kang, B. J., Lee, C., Kim, H. H. & Shung, K. K. Multi-particle trapping and manipulation by a high-frequency array transducer. Appl. Phys. Lett. 105, 214103 (2014).Marzo, A. et al. Holographic acoustic elements for manipulation of levitated objects. Nat. Commun. 6 (2015).Blackstock, D. T. Fundamentals of physical acoustics (John Wiley & Sons, 2000).Treeby, B. E. & Cox, B. Modeling power law absorption and dispersion for acoustic propagation using the fractional laplacian. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 127, 2741–2748 (2010).Treeby, B. E., Jaros, J., Rendell, A. P. & Cox, B. Modeling nonlinear ultrasound propagation in heterogeneous media with power law absorption using a k-space pseudospectral method. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 131, 4324–4336 (2012).Jiménez, N. et al. Time-domain simulation of ultrasound propagation in a tissue-like medium based on the resolution of the nonlinear acoustic constitutive relations. Acta Acustica united with Acustica 102, 876–892 (2016)

Effects of a novel carbohydrate and protein source on sow performance during lactation

Ninety-one primiparous and multiparous sows and their pigs were used to evaluate the effects of a novel carbohydrate- and protein-based feed ingredient (Nutri-Pal, NP) on sow and litter performance during lactation. Nutri-Pal is a feed supplement for sows that consists of a blend of milk chocolate, brewer\u27s yeast, whey products, and glucooligosaccharides. The dietary treatments consisted of a corn-soybean meal control and a corn-soybean meal plus 5% NP fed from d 110 of gestation to weaning. The diets were formulated to be equal in total Lys and ME. Sows were allotted to treatment based on parity, body weight, and the date of d 110 of gestation. There were 46 and 45 sows per treatment over four farrowing groups. Litters were standardized to 10 pigs and weighed within 1 d of farrowing, and all sows weaned at least 8 pigs at an average age of 21 d. Sows were weighed on d 110 of gestation, d 1 postfarrowing, and at weaning. Sows were fed three times daily during lactation. Sows were checked twice daily after weaning for signs of estrus. The weaning weight of sows fed NP was increased (P \u3c 0.10) compared with those fed the control diet. Sows fed the control diet tended (P = 0.11) to lose more weight per day from d 110 of gestation to weaning than the sows fed NP. Otherwise, sow response variables (sow weight on d 110 of gestation and d 1 postfarrowing, d 110 of gestation to d 1 postfarrowing and lactation weight change per day, d 110 of gestation to d 1 postfarrowing, lactation, and total feed intake, days to estrus, pigs born alive or dead, and litter and average pig birth weight) were not affected (P \u3e 0.10) by diet. There were no effects (P \u3e 0.10) of diet on litter performance response variables (pigs weaned, litter and average pig weaning weight and gain, and survival percent). The NP feed ingredient had minor effects on sow productivity, but it did not affect litter productivity indices. ©2004 American Society of Animal Science. All rights reserved

Capturing a Stata dataset and releasing it into REDCap

With technology advances, researchers can now capture data using web-based applications. One such application, Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), allows for data entry from any computer with an Internet connection. As the use of REDCap has increased in popularity, we have observed the need to easily create data dictionaries and data collection instruments for REDCap. The command presented in this article, redcapture, demonstrates one method to create a REDCap-ready data dictionary using a loaded Stata dataset, illustrated by examples of starting from an existing dataset or completely starting from scratch

Capturing a Stata dataset and releasing it into REDCap

With technology advances, researchers can now capture data using web-based applications. One such application, Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap), allows for data entry from any computer with an Internet connection. As the use of REDCap has increased in popularity, we have observed the need to easily create data dictionaries and data collection instruments for REDCap. The command presented in this article, redcapture, demonstrates one method to create a REDCap-ready data dictionary using a loaded Stata dataset, illustrated by examples of starting from an existing dataset or completely starting from scratch