State of the art in breast intraoperative electron radiation therapy after intraoperative ultrasound introduction

Background. Breast intraoperative electron radiation therapy (B-IOERT) can be used in clinical practice both as elective irradiation (partial breast irradiation - APBI) in low risk breast cancer patients, and as an anticipated boost. The procedure generally includes the use of a shielding disk between the residual breast and the pectoralis fascia for the protection of the tissues underneath the target volume. The aim of the study was to evaluate the role of intraoperative ultrasound (IOUS) in improving the quality of B-IOERT. Patients and methods. B-IOERT was introduced in Trieste in 2012 and its technique was improved in 2014 with IOUS. Both, needle and IOUS were used to measure target thickness and the latter was used even to check the correct position of the shielding disk. The primary endpoint of the study was the evaluation of the effectiveness of IOUS in reducing the risk of a disk misalignment related to B-IOERT and the secondary endpoint was the analysis of acute and late toxicity, by comparing two groups of patients treated with IOERT as a boost, either measured with IOUS and needle (Group 1) or with needle alone (Group 2). Acute and late toxicity were evaluated by validated scoring systems. Results. From the institutional patients who were treated between June 2012 and October 2019, 109 were eligible for this study (corresponding to 110 cases, as one patients underwent bilateral conservative surgery and bilateral B-IOERT). Of these, 38 were allocated to group 1 and 72 to group 2. The target thickness measured with the IOUS probe and with the needle were similar (mean difference of 0.1 mm, p = 0.38). The percentage of patients in which the shield was perfectly aligned after IOUS introduction increased from 23% to more than 70%. Moreover, patients treated after IOUS guidance had less acute toxicity (36.8% vs. 48.6%, p = 0.33) from radiation therapy, which reached no statistical significance. Late toxicity turned out to be similar regardless of the use of IOUS guidance: 39.5% vs. 37.5% (p = 0.99). Conclusions. IOUS showed to be accurate in measuring the target depth and decrease the misalignment between collimator and disk. Furthermore there was an absolute decrease in acute toxicity, even though not statistically significant, in the group of women who underwent B-IOERT with IOUS guidance

Student-athletes on Twitter: A content analysis of media, gender and sentiment

Master of ScienceDepartment of Journalism and Mass CommunicationsMajor Professor Not ListedSocial networking sites (SNS) have become the primary communication tool of the 21st century. Every age and demographic is using SNS for different purposes (Pew Research Center, 2019). Not only general society got to make use of it, but also corporations took advantage of it and used it as a part of their marketing, branding, and customer relationship strategies (Leonardi et al., 2013). Indeed, sport teams and organizations are also benefiting from it (Pegoraro, 2010). Moreover, individuals who are heavily involved in online conversations are athletes (Sanderson & Kassing, 2011). The term athletes is very broad, therefore, this study was only focused on student-athletes. There are over 170,000 student-athletes competing in Division I (D1) National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the largest and richest out of all the divisions (NCAA, n.d.). To have a more exclusive sample, instead of focusing on the whole NCAA student-athlete population, this thesis only included the sport of basketball. Basketball is a high-revenue sport that fits both men and women, while the Big 12 Conference is one of the strongest conferences in the NCAAs (Ordway, 2020). The decision on the conference selection was due to the author of this study being a former Big 12 Conference student-athlete. Altogether, this study focused on Big12 Conference basketball student-athletes and aimed to understand how these student-athletes use social networking sites, specifically Twitter. This study used Meltwater, a software platform for media analytics, to determine key metrics, gender disparities and sentiment. Results demonstrate significant differences between males and females, and this thesis went further in describing those findings. Lastly, the findings of this study can be expected to add significant findings to how student-athletes use social media, which can inform future studies and athletic departments on social media use among other athletes

High-speed processing of X-ray wavefront marking data with the Unified Modulated Pattern Analysis (UMPA) model

Wavefront-marking X-ray imaging techniques use e.g., sandpaper or a grating to generate intensity fluctuations, and analyze their distortion by the sample in order to retrieve attenuation, phase-contrast, and dark-field information. Phase contrast yields an improved visibility of soft-tissue specimens, while dark-field reveals small-angle scatter from sub-resolution structures. Both have found many biomedical and engineering applications. The previously developed Unified Modulated Pattern Analysis (UMPA) model extracts these modalities from wavefront-marking data. We here present a new UMPA implementation, capable of rapidly processing large datasets and featuring capabilities to greatly extend the field of view. We also discuss possible artifacts and additional new features