400 research outputs found
Quantitative anatomy of the posterior cricoid region
The anatomy of the posterior cricoid cartilage region was examined to obtain
a better quantitative understanding of this region. The mean height and width
of the posterior cricoid cartilage in the midline measured 24.5 mm and 25 mm
respectively. The mean distance between the fibres for the left and right posterior
cricoarytenoid muscles was 5 mm at the midpoint of the posterior cricoid
cartilage. The height of these muscles averaged 19 mm for left sides and 20 mm
for right sides. The mean distances from the midpoint and superior midline of
the posterior cricoid cartilage to the inferior laryngeal nerve were 14 mm and
15 mm respectively for left sides and 17 mm and 18 mm respectively for right
sides. It is hoped that these data will be of use to clinicians performing invasive
procedures in this area
Malignant fibrous histiocytoma of the spermatic cord: a case report and review of the literature
Malignant fibrous histiocytoma (MFH) is a morphologically ill-defined tumour of
the soft tissues and may involve nearly every organ of the body. MFH of the
spermatic cord represents an extremely rare entity and reports of it in the literature
are limited. We report a 69-year-old man found to have a left spermatic
cord MFH and retroperitoneal and mediastinal lymphadenopathy, who was treated
with radical orchiectomy and adjuvant chemotherapy. The morphological
findings of the spermatic tumour are presented and the literature is reviewed to
clarify the potential diagnostic/therapeutic approaches and the prognosis related
to spermatic cord MFH
The results of compression forces applied to the isolated human calvaria
Data for the force necessary to fracture the isolated calvaria (skull cap) are not
available in the extant literature. Twenty dry adult calvaria were tested to failure
quasistatically at the vertex using a 15-kN load cell. The forces necessary to
fracture or cause diastasis of calvarial sutures were then documented and gross
examination of the specimens made. Failure forces had a mean measurement of
2772 N. Initial fractures did not cross suture lines. Prior to complete destruction
of the calvaria there were 7 specimens in which all sutures of the calvaria became
diastatic, 6 specimens in which the calvaria became diastatic along only
the coronal sutures, 2 specimens in which the calvaria became diastatic along
only the sagittal suture and 5 specimens in which there were diagonal linear
parietal bone fractures. Our hopes are that these data may contribute to the
structural design of more safer protective devices for use in our society, assist in
predicting injury and aid in the construction of treatment paradigms
Does a third head of the rectus femoris muscle exist?
Current anatomical texts describe only two tendinous origins of the rectus femoris
muscle. The authors identified one older reference in which a third head of
the rectus femoris muscle was briefly described. In order to confirm the existence
of this head, 48 adult cadavers (96 sides) underwent detailed dissection of
the proximal attachments of the rectus femoris muscle. Of these sides 83%
were found to harbour a recognised third head of the rectus femoris muscle.
This additional head was found to attach deeply to the iliofemoral ligament and
superficially with the tendon of the gluteus minimus muscle as it attached into
the femur. This tendon attached to the anterior aspect of the greater trochanter
in an inferolateral direction compared to the straight head. The mean length
and width of the third head was 2 cm and 4 cm, respectively. The mean thickness
was found to be 3 mm. Most commonly this third head was bilaterally
absent or bilaterally present. However, 4.2% were found only on left sides and
5.2% were found only on right sides. The angle created between the reflected
and third heads was approximately 60 degrees. Two sides (both left sides with
one female and one male specimen) were found to have third heads that were
bilaminar. These bilaminar third heads had a distinct layer attaching to the underlying
iliofemoral ligament and a superficial layer blending with the gluteus
minimus tendon to insert onto the greater trochanter. Although the function of
such an attachment is speculative, the clinician may wish to consider this structure
in the interpretation of imaging or in surgical procedures in this region, as
in our study it was present on the majority of sides
Dilated Convolutions in Neural Networks for Left Atrial Segmentation in 3D Gadolinium Enhanced-MRI
Segmentation of the left atrial chamber and assessing its morphology, are essential for improving our understanding of atrial fibrillation, the most common type of cardiac arrhythmia. Automation of this process in 3D gadolinium enhanced-MRI (GE-MRI) data is desirable, as manual delineation is time-consuming, challenging and observer-dependent. Recently, deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have gained tremendous traction and achieved state-of-the-art results in medical image segmentation. However, it is difficult to incorporate local and global information without using contracting (pooling) layers, which in turn reduces segmentation accuracy for smaller structures. In this paper, we propose a 3D CNN for volumetric segmentation of the left atrial chamber in LGE-MRI. Our network is based on the well known U-Net architecture. We employ a 3D fully convolutional network, with dilated convolutions in the lowest level of the network, and residual connections between encoder blocks to incorporate local and global knowledge. The results show that including global context through the use of dilated convolutions, helps in domain adaptation, and the overall segmentation accuracy is improved in comparison to a 3D U-Net
Mining and analysis of audiology data to find significant factors associated with tinnitus masker
Objectives: The objective of this research is to find the factors associated with tinnitus masker from the literature, and by using the large amount of audiology data available from a large NHS (National Health Services, UK) hearing aid clinic. The factors evaluated were hearing impairment, age, gender, hearing aid type, mould and clinical comments.
Design: The research includes literature survey for factors associated with tinnitus masker, and performs the analysis of audiology data using statistical and data mining techniques.
Setting: This research uses a large audiology data but it also faced the problem of limited data for tinnitus.
Participants: It uses 1,316 records for tinnitus and other diagnoses, and 10,437 records of clinical comments from a hearing aid clinic.
Primary and secondary outcome measures: The research is looking for variables associated with tinnitus masker, and in future, these variables can be combined into a single model to develop a decision support system to predict about tinnitus masker for a patient.
Results: The results demonstrated that tinnitus maskers are more likely to be fit to individuals with milder forms of hearing loss, and the factors age, gender, type of hearing aid and mould were all found significantly associated with tinnitus masker. In particular, those patients having Age<=55 years were more likely to wear a tinnitus masker, as well as those with milder forms of hearing loss. ITE (in the ear) hearing aids were also found associated with tinnitus masker. A feedback on the results of association of mould with tinnitus masker from a professional audiologist of a large NHS (National Health Services, UK) was also taken to better understand them. The results were obtained with different accuracy for different techniques. For example, the chi-squared test results were obtained with 95% accuracy, for Support and Confidence only those results were retained which had more than 1% Support and 80% Confidence.
Conclusions: The variables audiograms, age, gender, hearing aid type and mould were found associated with the
choice of tinnitus masker in the literature and by using statistical and data mining techniques. The further work in this research would lead to the development of a decision support system for tinnitus masker with an explanation that how that decision was obtained
Pancreatic adenocarcinoma in a patient with Situs Inversus: a case report of this rare coincidence
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Situs inversus </it>(SI) is a relatively rare occurrence in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Pancreatic resection in these patients has rarely been described. CT scan imaging is a principle modality for detecting pancreatic cancer and its use in SI patients is seldom reported.</p> <p>Case Presentation</p> <p>We report a 48 year old woman with SI who, despite normal CT scan 8 months earlier, presented with obstructive jaundice and a pancreatic head mass requiring a pancreaticoduodenectomy. The surgical pathology report demonstrated pancreatic adenocarcinoma.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>SI is a rare condition with concurrent pancreatic cancer being even rarer. Despite the rarity, pancreaticoduodenectomy in these patients for resectable lesions is safe as long as special consideration to the anatomy is taken. Additionally, radiographic imaging has significantly improved detection of early pancreatic cancer; however, there continues to be a need for improved detection of small neoplasms.</p
A Standardised Procedure for Evaluating Creative Systems: Computational Creativity Evaluation Based on What it is to be Creative
Computational creativity is a flourishing research area, with a variety of creative systems being produced and developed. Creativity evaluation has not kept pace with system development with an evident lack of systematic evaluation of the creativity of these systems in the literature. This is partially due to difficulties in defining what it means for a computer to be creative; indeed, there is no consensus on this for human creativity, let alone its computational equivalent. This paper proposes a Standardised Procedure for Evaluating Creative Systems (SPECS). SPECS is a three-step process: stating what it means for a particular computational system to be creative, deriving and performing tests based on these statements. To assist this process, the paper offers a collection of key components of creativity, identified empirically from discussions of human and computational creativity. Using this approach, the SPECS methodology is demonstrated through a comparative case study evaluating computational creativity systems that improvise music
Forward-Backward Asymmetry in Top Quark Production in ppbar Collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV
Reconstructable final state kinematics and charge assignment in the reaction
ppbar->ttbar allows tests of discrete strong interaction symmetries at high
energy. We define frame dependent forward-backward asymmetries for the outgoing
top quark in both the ppbar and ttbar rest frames, correct for experimental
distortions, and derive values at the parton-level. Using 1.9/fb of ppbar
collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV recorded with the CDF II detector at the
Fermilab Tevatron, we measure forward-backward top quark production asymmetries
in the ppbar and ttbar rest frames of A_{FB,pp} = 0.17 +- 0.08 and A_{FB,tt} =
0.24 +- 0.14.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Phys.Rev.Lett, corrected references
and change of tex
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