Editorial: Challenges for the usability of AR and VR for clinical neurosurgical procedures

There are a number of challenges that must be faced when trying to develop AR and VR-based Neurosurgical simulators, Surgical Navigation Platforms, and “Smart OR” systems. Trying to simulate an operating room environment and surgical tasks in Augmented and Virtual Reality is a challenge many are attempting to solve, in order to train surgeons or help them operate. What are some of the needs of the surgeon, and what are the challenges encountered (human computer interface, perception, workflow, etc). We discuss these tradeoffs and conclude with critical remarks

Comment promouvoir une relation parents-enfant saine lors de problématiques de pleurs excessifs: Travail de Bachelor

Contexte : Les pleurs du nourrisson, surtout s’ils sont inconsolables, sont une grande source d’inquiétude pour les parents. Par ailleurs, les pleurs sont une des raisons les plus fréquentes des consultations auprès de spécialistes dans les premiers mois de vie de l’enfant. Objectif : Cette revue de littérature a pour but d’examiner le vécu parental lors de situations de pleurs excessifs, déceler des éventuels facteurs de risque des pleurs et évaluer l’impact d’interventions des professionnels de la santé afin d’améliorer l’accompagnement par ces derniers des parents dans de telles situations. Méthode : Revue de littérature et analyse descriptive et critique de cinq articles, publiés dans les 10 dernières années. Résultats : Les parents ne se sentent pas toujours bien accompagnés par les professionnels de la santé. Souvent, ils se sentent isolés dans leur problématique. Les facteurs influençant les pleurs sont très souvent de nature psycho-sociale. Les programmes d’intervention apparaissent peu concluants, cependant une intervention familiale, prenant en compte les aspects psychologiques, montre des résultats prometteurs mais non significatifs. Conclusion : Le vécu difficile des parents dans de telles situations devrait être pris au sérieux. L’investigation du contexte psycho-social est très importante dans l’accompagnement de situations de pleurs excessifs. L’inclusion du père dans ces contextes paraît importante. Le travail autour du sentiment de compétence parentale semble un outil adapté des sages-femmes pour promouvoir une relation saine parent-enfant. Afin d’évaluer la pertinence de cette approche des problématiques de pleurs excessifs, davantage d’études devraient être faites.Background : Crying infants, especially if they are inconsolable, are a source of great anxiety for parents. Furthermore, crying is one of the most frequent reasons why parents seek medical care in the first few months of life of their children. Objective : This literary review aims to examine the experiences of parents faced with excessive crying by their child, determine possible risk factors for crying and evaluate the impact of intervention by healthcare professionals in order to improve the support they can provide parents in these types of situations. Methodology : A review of the literature as well as a descriptive and critical analysis of five articles published in the last ten years. Results : Parents do not always feel well supported by healthcare professionals. They often feel isolated and think they have to tackle their problem themselves. The factors influencing crying are very often psychosocial in nature. Intervention programs appear to be rather inconclusive. However, family-based intervention that takes account of psychological aspects has shown promising albeit non-significant results. Conclusions : The difficulties faced by parents in such situation should be taken seriously. An investigation of the psychosocial context is extremely important in providing support for cases of inconsolable crying. Involvement of the father in these contexts would appear to be important. Work relating to parental auto-efficacy appears to be a useful tool for midwives in promoting a healthy parent-child relationship. Further studies should be carried out to evaluate the appropriateness of this approach in cases of inconsolable crying

Design and evaluation of an augmented reality simulator using leap motion

Advances in virtual and augmented reality (AR) are having an impact on the medical field in areas such as surgical simulation. Improvements to surgical simulation will provide students and residents with additional training and evaluation methods. This is particularly important for procedures such as the endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV), which residents perform regularly. Simulators such as NeuroTouch, have been designed to aid in training associated with this procedure. The authors have designed an affordable and easily accessible ETV simulator, and compare it with the existing NeuroTouch for its usability and training effectiveness. This simulator was developed using Unity, Vuforia and the leap motion (LM) for an AR environment. The participants, 16 novices and two expert neurosurgeons, were asked to complete 40 targeting tasks. Participants used the NeuroTouch tool or a virtual hand controlled by the LM to select the position and orientation for these tasks. The length of time to complete each task was recorded and the trajectory log files were used to calculate performance. The resulting data from the novices\u27 and experts\u27 speed and accuracy are compared, and they discuss the objective performance of training in terms of the speed and accuracy of targeting accuracy for each system

Real-time Interactive Tractography Analysis for Multimodal Brain Visualization Tool: MultiXplore

Most debilitating neurological disorders can have anatomical origins. Yet unlike other body organs, the anatomy alone cannot easily provide an understanding of brain functionality. In fact, addressing the challenge of linking structural and functional connectivity remains in the frontiers of neuroscience. Aggregating multimodal neuroimaging datasets may be critical for developing theories that span brain functionality, global neuroanatomy and internal microstructures. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) are main such techniques that are employed to investigate the brain under normal and pathological conditions. FMRI records blood oxygenation level of the grey matter (GM), whereas DTI is able to reveal the underlying structure of the white matter (WM). Brain global activity is assumed to be an integration of GM functional hubs and WM neural pathways that serve to connect them. In this study we developed and evaluated a two-phase algorithm. This algorithm is employed in a 3D interactive connectivity visualization framework and helps to accelerate clustering of virtual neural pathways. In this paper, we will detail an algorithm that makes use of an index-based membership array formed for a whole brain tractography file and corresponding parcellated brain atlas. Next, we demonstrate efficiency of the algorithm by measuring required times for extracting a variety of fiber clusters, which are chosen in such a way to resemble all sizes probable output data files that algorithm will generate. The proposed algorithm facilitates real-time visual inspection of neuroimaging data to further the discovery in structure-function relationship of the brain networks

Multimodal connectivity based eloquence score computation and visualisation for computer-aided neurosurgical path planning

Non-invasive assessment of cognitive importance has been a major challenge for planning of neurosurgical procedures. In the past decade, in vivo brain imaging modalities have been considered for estimating the \u27eloquence\u27 of brain areas. In order to estimate the impact of damage caused by an access path towards a target region inside of the skull, multi-modal metrics are introduced in this paper. Accordingly, this estimated damage is obtained by combining multi-modal metrics. In other words, this damage is an aggregate of intervened grey matter volume and axonal fibre numbers, weighted by their importance within the assigned anatomical and functional networks. To validate these metrics, an exhaustive search algorithm is implemented for characterising the solution space and visually representing connectional cost associated with a path initiated from underlying points. In this presentation, brain networks are built from resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and deterministic tractography. their results demonstrate that the proposed approach is capable of refining traditional heuristics, such as choosing the minimal distance from the lesion, by supplementing connectional importance of the resected tissue. This provides complementary information to help the surgeon in avoiding important functional hubs and their anatomical linkages; which are derived from neuroimaging modalities and incorporated to the related anatomical landmarks

New assessment of basement units in the fitz roy area: implications for an early mesozoic tectono-metamorphic event at southern patagonia

Among the complex collage of metamorphic belts exposed in the Patagonian Andes, the Triassic metamorphic rocks are poorlyrepresented. They only outcrop at the southern Chilean coast within the Chonos Metamorphic Complex (CMC), a subductioncomplex (Hervé et al. 2008), which witness of an active subduction during the Late Triassic (Hervé and Fanning 2001). Recently,U-Pb dating in detrital zircons performed in metasedimentary rocks from the Nunatak Viedma, which crops out west of the Fitz Royarea, within the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, revealed grain-ages youngest at Late Triassic (Suárez et al. 2018). We proposedto define the Nunatak Viedma Unit (NVU) in the Southern Patagonian Andes (SPA; Suárez et al. 2018) on the basis of these newobservations. The rocks of the NVU exhibit a main phase of ductile to brittle-ductile deformation tentatively correlated with theLate Triassic-Early Jurassic Chonide deformation event (Suárez et al. 2018) identified in the southern Chilean coast (Thomson andHervé 2002; Hervé et al. 2008). However, the age of the NVU?s tectono-metamorphic event, as well as its tectonic significance, arestill unknown. New geological mapping carried out in the Fitz Roy region (Fig. 1) reveals that outcrops previously mapped either asBahía de la Lancha Formation (BLF) or as volcanic rocks of the El Quemado Complex, shows lithological and structural similaritieswith the rocks of the NVU (Fig. 1). The preliminary structural results presented in this contribution aim to better constrain thedeformation phase of the NVU and to discuss its age and tectonic significance.Fil: Suárez, Rodrigo Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Estudios Andinos "Don Pablo Groeber". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Estudios Andinos "Don Pablo Groeber"; ArgentinaFil: Ghiglione, Matias. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Estudios Andinos "Don Pablo Groeber". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Estudios Andinos "Don Pablo Groeber"; ArgentinaFil: Sue, Christian. Universite de Franche-Comte; FranciaFil: Roy, Sandrine. Université de Savoie Mont-Blanc; FranciaXV Congreso Geológico ChilenoConcepciónChileUniversidad de ConcepciónColegio de Geólogos de ChileSociedad Geológica de Chil

IDENTIFICATION DES ENJEUX PRIORITAIRES DES PME DANS LE BUT D'ÉTABLIR UN TABLEAU DE BORD POUR LEUR GESTION DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE

Cette présentation a pour objectif de proposer un cadre d'analyse pour le développement d'un outil de pilotage du développement durable en contexte PME. Dans une première partie, les principales approches des questions liées à la responsabilité sociale de l'entreprise seront abordées. Dans une seconde partie, une revue de la documentation relative au développement durable en contexte PME fera ressortir les apports et les limites des travaux du domaine. Suivra un exposé de la norme ISO 26000 et du guide SD 21000. Enfin, en dernière partie, les données recueillies auprès de 43 managers et qui concernent, en autre, une liste des enjeux prioritaires adaptés aux PME sont présentés.Développement durable, SD 21000, ISO 26000, tableau de bord. PME

Cognitive intraindividual variability and white matter integrity in aging

The intraindividual variability (IIV) of cognitive performance has been shown to increase with aging. While brain research has generally focused on mean performance, little is known about neural correlates of cognitive IIV. Nevertheless, some studies suggest that IIV relates more strongly than mean level of performance to the quality of white matter (WM). Our study aims to explore the relation between WM integrity and cognitive IIV by combining functional (fMRI) and structural (diffusion tensor imaging, DTI) imaging. Twelve young adults (aged 18-30 years) and thirteen older adults (61-82 years) underwent a battery of neuropsychological tasks, along with fMRI and DTI imaging. Their behavioral data were analyzed and correlated with the imaging data at WM regions of interest defined on the basis of (1) the fMRI-activated areas and (2) the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) WM tractography atlas. For both methods, fractional anisotropy, along with the mean, radial, and axial diffusivity parameters, was computed. In accord with previous studies, our results showed that the DTI parameters were more related to IIV than to mean performance. Results also indicated that age differences in the DTI parameters were more pronounced in the regions activated primarily by young adults during a choice reaction-time task than in those also activated in older adults. © 2013 Nathalie Mella et al

Metabolomics of fecal samples: a practical consideration

Background Metabolic profiling is becoming increasingly popular to identify subtle metabolic variations induced by diet alterations and to characterize the metabolic impact of variations of the gut microbiota. In this context, fecal samples, that contain unabsorbed metabolites, offer a direct access to the outcome of diet - gut microbiota metabolic interactions. Hence, they are a useful addition to measure the ensemble of endogenous and microbial metabolites, also referred to as the hyperbolome. Scope and Approach Many reviews have focused on the metabolomics analysis of urine, plasma and tissue biopsies; yet the analysis of fecal samples presents some challenges that have received little attention. We propose here a short review of current practices and some practical considerations when analyzing fecal material using metabolic profiling of small polar molecules and lipidomics. Key Findings and Conclusions: To allow for a complete coverage of the fecal metabolome, it is recommended to use a combination of analytical techniques that will measure both hydrophilic and hydrophobic metabolites. A clear set of guidelines to collect, prepare and analyse fecal material is urgently needed

Moderating Effect of Cortical Thickness on BOLD Signal Variability Age-Related Changes

The time course of neuroanatomical structural and functional measures across the lifespan is commonly reported in association with aging. Blood oxygen-level dependent signal variability, estimated using the standard deviation of the signal, or BOLDSD , is an emerging metric of variability in neural processing, and has been shown to be positively correlated with cognitive flexibility. Generally, BOLDSD is reported to decrease with aging, and is thought to reflect age-related cognitive decline. Additionally, it is well established that normative aging is associated with structural changes in brain regions, and that these predict functional decline in various cognitive domains. Nevertheless, the interaction between alterations in cortical morphology and BOLDSD changes has not been modeled quantitatively. The objective of the current study was to investigate the influence of cortical morphology metrics [i.e., cortical thickness (CT), gray matter (GM) volume, and cortical area (CA)] on age-related BOLDSD changes by treating these cortical morphology metrics as possible physiological confounds using linear mixed models. We studied these metrics in 28 healthy older subjects scanned twice at approximately 2.5 years interval. Results show that BOLDSD is confounded by cortical morphology metrics. Respectively, changes in CT but not GM volume nor CA, show a significant interaction with BOLDSD alterations. Our study highlights that CT changes should be considered when evaluating BOLDSD alternations in the lifespan