An Optical AC Voltage Sensor Based on the Transverse Pockels Effect

This paper introduces an optical AC voltage sensor based on the transverse Pockels effect. The sensor utilizes a bulk Bi4Ge3O12 (BGO) crystal as the sensing element. The measurement principle has been described and prototype of the sensor has been constructed and evaluated. Good linearity and accuracy performance was obtained for AC voltage measurement. The proposed sensor can be thus applied to high AC voltage measurements in the electric power industry

Prostate Segmentation in MRI Using Transformer Encoder and Decoder Framework

To develop an accurate segmentation model for the prostate and lesion area to help clinicians diagnose diseases, we propose a multi-encoder and decoder segmentation network, denoted Muled-Net, which can concurrently segment the prostate and lesion regions in an image. The model performs parallel calculations for dual input. In two encoder branches of the model, a new transformer encoder is used to overcome the fact that only information from the neighborhood pixels can be captured, increasing the ability to capture global dependencies. Furthermore, given the usually small size of the lesion, ASPP and feature fusion are merged to expand the perceptual field and retain more contextual information of the shallow layer in decoder. To the best of our limited knowledge, there is no public dataset for the segmentation of the prostate and its lesion regions. So we made a publicly usable dataset. Muled-Net is compared with other deep learning methods, FCN, U-Net, U-Net++, and ResU-Net with four-fold cross-validation. Of all 218 subjects, 140 healthy individuals and 78 patients with prostate cancer were included in this work. Average Dice of 95%, Iou of 89%, sensitivity of 94%, 95HD of 9.56, and MSD of 0.66 are achieved for the prostate segmentation and average Dice of 89%, Iou of 82%, sensitivity of 92%, 95HD of 11.16, and MSD of 1.09 for the segmentation of the prostate lesion regions. The performance of the proposed model has made significant improvements to the segmentation of the lesion regions in particular, suggesting that the model could be considered as an auxiliary tool to ease the workload of physicians and help them in making treatment decisions

Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials of Different Types of Patch Materials during Carotid Endarterectomy

<div><h3>Background and Purpose</h3><p>Carotid endarterectomy (CEA) with patch angioplasty produces greater results than with primary closure; however, there remains uncertainty on the optimal patch material in CEA. A systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was performed to evaluate the effect of angioplasty using venous patch versus synthetic patch material, and Dacron patch versus polytetrafluoroethelene (PTFE) patch material during CEA.</p> <h3>Methods</h3><p>A multiple electronic health database screening was performed including the Cochrane library, Pubmed, Ovid, EMBASE and Google Scholar on all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published before November 2012 that compared the outcomes of patients undergoing CEA with venous patch versus synthetic patch. RCTs were included if they compared carotid patch angioplasty with autologus venous patch versus synthetic patch material, or compared one type of synthetic patch with another.</p> <h3>Results</h3><p>Thirteen RCTs were identified. Ten trials, involving 1946 CEAs, compared venous patch with synthetic patch materials. Two trials, involving 400 CEAs in 380 patients, compared Dacron patch with PTFE patch. The hemostasis time in CEA with PTFE patch was significantly longer than with venous patch (<em>P</em><0.0001), and longer than with Dacron patch (<em>P</em><0.0001). There was no significant difference of mortality rate, stroke rate, restenosis, and operative time in CEA with venous patch versus synthetic patch material, or in CEA with Dacron patch versus PTFE patch (all <em>P</em>>0.05). One RCT of 95 CEAs in 92 patients compared bovine pericardium with Dacron patch, and demonstrated a statistically significant decrease in intraoperative suture line bleeding with bovine pericardium compared with Dacron patch (<em>P</em><0.001).</p> <h3>Conclusions</h3><p>The hemostasis time in CEA with PTFE patch was longer than with venous patch or Dacron patch. The overall perioperative and long-term mortality rate, stroke rate, restenosis, and operative time were similar when using venous patch versus synthetic patch material or Dacron patch versus PTFE patch material during CEA. More data are required to clarify differences between different patch materials.</p> </div

Mortality in both groups.

<p>Graphical representation of the results. <i>M-H</i> : Mantel-Haenszel.</p

Flow diagram showing different steps of the systematic review.

<p><i>RCTs:</i> randomized controlled trials.</p

Restenosis of carotid artery in both groups.

<p>Graphical representation of the results. <i>M-H:</i> Mantel-Haenszel.</p

Any stroke event is compared in both groups.

<p>Graphical representation of the results. <i>M-H:</i> Mantel-Haenszel.</p

Reoperation for wound hematoma compared in both groups.

<p>Graphical representation of the results. <i>M-H:</i> Mantel-Haenszel.</p