An Automatic Calibration Method for Near-infrared Camera in Optical Surgical Navigation

Optical surgical navigation system (SNS) with near-infrared tracking system is becoming extensively used in clinics, and the accuracy of SNS is influenced by the calibration of near-infrared cameras (NIRCs). We propose an automatic calibration method for NIRCs. The method is based on a designed calibration board. In our experiments, corners are automatically extracted to obtain the parameters of NIRCs. This method has the advantages of saving time, efficiency in computation, high accuracy, and reliability. In our experiments, an NIRC can be calibrated in only 5 s. Meanwhile, the average relative errors of the focal length and principal point are 0.87% and 1.39%, respectively

Pre-Treatment of Recombinant Mouse MFG-E8 Downregulates LPS-Induced TNF-α Production in Macrophages via STAT3-Mediated SOCS3 Activation

Milk fat globule-epidermal growth factor factor 8 (MFG-E8) regulates innate immune function by modulating cellular signaling, which is less understood. Herein, we aimed to investigate the direct anti-inflammatory role of MFG-E8 in macrophages by pre-treatment with recombinant murine MFG-E8 (rmMFG-E8) followed by stimulation with LPS in RAW264.7 cells and in peritoneal macrophages, isolated from wild-type (WT) or MFG-E8−/− mice. RAW264.7 cells and mouse peritoneal macrophages treated with rmMFG-E8 significantly downregulated LPS-induced TNF-α mRNA by 25% and 24%, and protein levels by 29% and 23%, respectively (P<0.05). Conversely, peritoneal macrophages isolated from MFG-E8−/− mice produced 28% higher levels of TNF-α, as compared to WT mice when treated with LPS. In in vivo, endotoxemia induced by intraperitoneal injection of LPS (5 mg/kg BW), at 4 h after induction, serum level of TNF-α was significantly higher in MFG-E8−/− mice (837 pg/mL) than that of WT (570 pg/mL, P<0.05). To elucidate the direct anti-inflammatory effect of MFG-E8, we examined STAT3 and its target gene, SOCS3. Treatment with rmMGF-E8 significantly induced pSTAT3 and SOCS3 in macrophages. Similar results were observed in in vivo treatment of rmMFG-E8 in peritoneal cells and splenic tissues. Pre-treatment with rmMFG-E8 significantly reduced LPS-induced NF-κB p65 contents. These data clearly indicated that rmMFG-E8 upregulated SOCS3 which in turn interacted with NF-κB p65, facilitating negative regulation of TLR4 signaling for LPS-induced TNF-α production. Our findings strongly suggest that MFG-E8 is a direct anti-inflammatory molecule, and that it could be developed as a therapy in attenuating inflammation and tissue injury

A framework combining window width-level adjustment and Gaussian filter-based multi-resolution for automatic whole heart segmentation

Heart diseases are prevalent among the general population. These diseases can be diagnosed in their early stages through a quantitative evaluation of cardiac functions. In a typical procedure, heart segmentation is initially performed. Quantitative information is then obtained from a 3D reconstructed image of the heart. However, manual segmentation is time-consuming and prone to inter- and intra-observer variations. As such, automatic methods must be developed to assess cardiac functions quantitatively. In this study, an automatic algorithm for whole heart segmentation was established through window width-level adjustment and Gaussian filter-based multi-resolution methods. The proposed algorithm preprocesses the image by adjusting the window width and the centre to acquire cardiac images with clear anatomical structures. The cardiac image is then decomposed into several resolution layers by using a Gaussian filter to eliminate discontinuity associated with traditional pyramid down-sampling and decomposition. A registration-based segmentation algorithm is applied to the cardiac image. The proposed segmentation algorithm was validated with a clinical dataset of 14 cardiac dual-source computed tomography images. Results show that the proposed methods improve the registration accuracy of the epicardium and the endocardium. The volume of the manual segmentation standard is not significantly different from that of the proposed segmentation and the accuracy of the method reaches almost 1 mm in most areas. Thus, the proposed method can be used to perform a high-precision segmentation of the whole heart

Analysis of changes in water quality and treatment effectiveness of seven major river basins in China from 2001 to 2020

The seven major river basins (the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Pearl River, the Songhua River, the Huai River, the Hai River and the Liao River) are the most important surface water resources in China, but there is a lack of quantitative analyses of water quality change trends, horizontal comparisons of governance effects, and systematic review of effective policies since the 21st century. Based on the water resources bulletin and environmental status bulletin issued by government departments, the changes in water quality, pollutant indicators and treatment effectiveness of seven major basins from 2001 to 2020 have been scientifically analyzed using mathematical and statistical methods. (1) Over the period 2001 to 2020, the overall water quality in the seven major river basins exhibited a gradual improvement. Different basins demonstrated varied growth values for Grade I-III water, reduction values for Grade IV-V, and inferior Grade V water. (2) Between 2001 and 2020, changes in sewage discharge volume and types led to adjustments in the main pollutant indicators of the seven basins. (3) The ranking of the pollution degree in the seven major basins exhibited dynamic changes but also remained relatively stable during specific periods or years. (4) Assessing the average annual growth rate of Grade I-III water and the average annual reduction rate of Grade IV-V and inferior Grade V water, the Huai River basin demonstrated the most outstanding governance effectiveness, while the Liao River basin, the Yellow River basin, and the Songhua River basin also achieved notable treatment results. (5) The improvement in water quality across the seven major river basins can be attributed to scientific planning, enhanced policies and regulations, surge in investment in water conservancy infrastructure, heightened environmental protection awareness, application of green production technology. To sum up, the research findings not only provide a scientific foundation for the governance and protection of the seven major basins but also offer a valuable reference for other developing countries to strike a balance between economic development and environmental protection

Pivotal Role of the α2A-Adrenoceptor in Producing Inflammation and Organ Injury in a Rat Model of Sepsis

Background: Norepinephrine (NE) modulates the responsiveness of macrophages to proinflammatory stimuli through the activation of adrenergic receptors (ARs). Being part of the stress response, early increases of NE in sepsis sustain adverse systemic inflammatory responses. The intestine is an important source of NE release in the early stage of cecal ligation and puncture (CLP)-induced sepsis in rats, which then stimulates TNF-a production in Kupffer cells (KCs) through the activation of the a2-AR. It is important to know which of the three a2-AR subtypes (i.e., a2A, a2B or a2C) is responsible for the upregulation of TNF-a production. The aim of this study was to determine the contribution of a2A-AR in this process. Methodology/Principal Findings: Adult male rats underwent CLP and KCs were isolated 2 h later. Gene expression of a2A-AR was determined. In additional experiments, cultured KCs were incubated with NE with or without BRL-44408 maleate, a specific a2A-AR antagonist, and intraportal infusion of NE for 2 h with or without BRL-44408 maleate was carried out in normal animals. Finally, the impact of a2A-AR activation by NE was investigated under inflammatory conditions (i.e., endotoxemia and CLP). Gene expression of the a2A-AR subtype was significantly upregulated after CLP. NE increased the release of TNF-a in cultured KCs, which was specifically inhibited by the a2A-AR antagonist BRL-44408. Equally, intraportal NE infusion increased TNF-a gene expression in KCs and plasma TNF-a which was also abrogated by co-administration of BRL-44408. NE also potentiated LPS-induced TNF-a release via the a2A-AR in vitro and in vivo. This potentiation of TNF-a release by NE was mediated through the a2A-AR coupled Gai protein and the activation of the p38 MAP kinase. Treatment of septic animals with BRL-44408 suppressed TNF-a, prevented multiple organ injury and significantly improved survival from 45% to 75%. Conclusions/Significance: Our novel finding is that hyperresponsiveness to a2-AR stimulation observed in sepsis is primarily due to an increase in a2A-AR expression in KCs. This appears to be in part responsible for the increased proinflammatory response and ensuing organ injury in sepsis. These findings provide important feasibility information for further developing the a2A-AR antagonist as a new therapy for sepsis

Studies of the Mg-Al and cation-incorporated hydrotalcites

Mg-Al and cation-incorporated(containing Zn2+Ni2+Fe3+) hydrotalcites were synthesized and characterized. A detailed comparative analysis of structure and composition was made. Different cations influenced strongly textural parameters of hydrotalcites and the basicity of the obtained Mg-Al oxides after calcinations. With the cation incorporation, the distance of the brucite and the mount of CO32- as the compensating anion changed. Meanwhile the CO2-TPD was used to determine the basicity of the samples. The results showed that the basicity of the calcined hydrotalcites reduced. Finally, the activated hydrotalcite catalysts may efficiently replace homogeneous catalysts in Claisen-Schmidt condensation reaction of the benzaldehyde and propanal. And it was noteworthy that the calcined cation-type (containing Zn2+, Fe3+) hydrotalcites as catalysts did not show significant activity, in agreement with their low basicity

Characterization of Geographical and Meteorological Parameters

[EN]This chapter is devoted to the introduction of some geographical and meteorological information involved in the numerical modeling of wind fields and solar radiation. First, a brief description of the topographical data given by a Digital Elevation Model and Land Cover databases is provided. In particular, the Information System of Land Cover of Spain (SIOSE) is considered. The study is focused on the roughness length and the displacement height parameters that appear in the logarithmic wind profile, as well as in the albedo related to solar radiation computation. An extended literature review and characterization of both parameters are reported. Next, the concept of atmospheric stability is introduced from the Monin–Obukhov similarity theory to the recent revision of Zilitinkevich of the Neutral and Stable Boundary Layers (SBL). The latter considers the effect of the free-flow static stability and baroclinicity on the turbulent transport of momentum and of the Convective Boundary Layers (CBL), more precisely, the scalars in the boundary layer, as well as the model of turbulent entrainment

MilDetr: Detection Transformer for Military Camouflaged Target Detection

Military Camouflage Target Detection (MCTD) is a special object detection task that aims to detect military camouflaged targets in the wild. In the challenging MCTD task, the confusing appearance and contours of military camouflaged targets often lead to the poor performance of existing methods. In this study, we propose an end-to-end Military Detection Transformer (MilDetr) for MCTD. We introduce two improvements to enhance the model&#x2019;s performance. First, we employ the Reverse Features Feed Forward Neural Network (R3FN) for local information aggregation in the encoder of MilDetr. In addition, the Fusion Previous Query (FPQ) module is utilized for multi-stage query feature fusion in the decoder of MilDetr. To overcome data limitations for MCTD, we build two simulation military camouflaged target datasets called MilDet and MilCls. The ablation experiments on MilDet reveal the effectiveness of our improvements. Experimental results demonstrate that MilDetr obtains 95.6 AP on MilDet. Furthermore, MilDetr obtains 96.4 AP on MilDet with the pre-trained weights on ImageNet and MilCls. Compared with other object detectors, MilDetr achieves end-to-end military camouflaged target detection with superior performance

A Novel Approach to Synchronous Image Acquisition from Near Infrared Camera in Optical-Surgery Navigation System

The positional accuracy of an optical-surgery navigation system is significantly affected by two factors. One is the acquisition synchronism of the two cameras in the system, and the other is the phase difference in image transmission acquired by these cameras. To further enhance image-acquisition synchronism, a field programmable gate array (FPGA)- based synchronous-acquisition method is introduced in this paper. The FPGA control circuit board is independently designed to equalize the length of all data lines, thereby reducing differences in image transmission. Two Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductors (CMOS) image sensor chips of MT9V032 are also adopted to enable synchronous acquisition in passive acquisition mode. Moreover, the control of exposure time and frame number of MT9V032 under the passive acquisition mode is discussed. Finally, the proposed method is validated and the experimental results the two cameras show