Hepatic Resection Using a Water Jet Dissector

The mortality and morbidity in major hepatic resection is often related to hemorrhage. A high pressure, high velocity water jet has been developed and has been utilized to assist in hepatic parenchymal transection. Sixty-seven major hepatic resections were performed for solid hepatic tumors. The tissue fracture technique was used in 51 patients (76%), and the water jet dissector was used predominantly in 16 patients (24%). The extent of hepatic resection using each technique was similar. The results showed no difference in operative duration (p = .499). The mean estimated blood loss using the water jet was 1386 ml, and tissue fracture technique 2450 ml (p = .217). Transfusion requirements were less in the water jet group (mean 2.0 units) compared to the tissue fracture group (mean 5.2 units); (p = .023). Results obtained with the new water dissector are encouraging. The preliminary results suggest that blood loss may be diminished

Beyond Controlled Environments: 3D Camera Re-Localization in Changing Indoor Scenes

Long-term camera re-localization is an important task with numerous computer vision and robotics applications. Whilst various outdoor benchmarks exist that target lighting, weather and seasonal changes, far less attention has been paid to appearance changes that occur indoors. This has led to a mismatch between popular indoor benchmarks, which focus on static scenes, and indoor environments that are of interest for many real-world applications. In this paper, we adapt 3RScan - a recently introduced indoor RGB-D dataset designed for object instance re-localization - to create RIO10, a new long-term camera re-localization benchmark focused on indoor scenes. We propose new metrics for evaluating camera re-localization and explore how state-of-the-art camera re-localizers perform according to these metrics. We also examine in detail how different types of scene change affect the performance of different methods, based on novel ways of detecting such changes in a given RGB-D frame. Our results clearly show that long-term indoor re-localization is an unsolved problem. Our benchmark and tools are publicly available at waldjohannau.github.io/RIO10Comment: ECCV 2020, project website https://waldjohannau.github.io/RIO1

Norbornane: An investigation into its valence electronic structure using electron momentum spectroscopy, and density functional and Green's function theories

CIRCULATION & FULFILLMENT DIV, 2 HUNTINGTON QUADRANGLE, STE 1 N O 1, MELVILLE, USA, NY, 11747-450

Activation of pruritogenic TGR5, MRGPRA3, and MRGPRC11 on colon-innervating afferents induces visceral hypersensitivity

Itch induces scratching that removes irritants from the skin, whereas pain initiates withdrawal or avoidance of tissue damage. While pain arises from both the skin and viscera, we investigated whether pruritogenic irritant mechanisms also function within visceral pathways. We show that subsets of colon-innervating sensory neurons in mice express, either individually or in combination, the pruritogenic receptors Tgr5 and the Mas-gene-related GPCRs Mrgpra3 and Mrgprc11. Agonists of these receptors activated subsets of colonic sensory neurons and evoked colonic afferent mechanical hypersensitivity via a TRPA1-dependent mechanism. In vivo intracolonic administration of individual TGR5, MRGPRA3, or MRGPRC11 agonists induced pronounced visceral hypersensitivity to colorectal distension. Coadministration of these agonists as an "itch cocktail" augmented hypersensitivity to colorectal distension and changed mouse behavior. These irritant mechanisms were maintained and enhanced in a model of chronic visceral hypersensitivity relevant to irritable bowel syndrome. Neurons from human dorsal root ganglia also expressed TGR5, as well as the human ortholog MRGPRX1, and showed increased responsiveness to pruritogenic agonists in pathological states. These data support the existence of an irritant-sensing system in the colon that is a visceral representation of the itch pathways found in skin, thereby contributing to sensory disturbances accompanying common intestinal disorders. - 2019 American Society for Clinical Investigation. All rights reserved.Work was supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) Project Grant (1083480 to SMB and DPP), an NHMRC R.D. Wright Biomedical Research Fellow (APP1126378 to SMB), and an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Award (DE130100223 to AMH). NWB was supported by grants from the NIH (NS102722; DE026806; DK118971) and the US Department of Defence (W81XWH1810431).Scopu

End-to-End Learning of Driving Models with Surround-View Cameras and Route Planners

For human drivers, having rear and side-view mirrors is vital for safe driving. They deliver a more complete view of what is happening around the car. Human drivers also heavily exploit their mental map for navigation. Nonetheless, several methods have been published that learn driving models with only a front-facing camera and without a route planner. This lack of information renders the self-driving task quite intractable. We investigate the problem in a more realistic setting, which consists of a surround-view camera system with eight cameras, a route planner, and a CAN bus reader. In particular, we develop a sensor setup that provides data for a 360-degree view of the area surrounding the vehicle, the driving route to the destination, and low-level driving maneuvers (e.g. steering angle and speed) by human drivers. With such a sensor setup we collect a new driving dataset, covering diverse driving scenarios and varying weather/illumination conditions. Finally, we learn a novel driving model by integrating information from the surround-view cameras and the route planner. Two route planners are exploited: 1) by representing the planned routes on OpenStreetMap as a stack of GPS coordinates, and 2) by rendering the planned routes on TomTom Go Mobile and recording the progression into a video. Our experiments show that: 1) 360-degree surround-view cameras help avoid failures made with a single front-view camera, in particular for city driving and intersection scenarios; and 2) route planners help the driving task significantly, especially for steering angle prediction.Comment: to be published at ECCV 201

Single-Image Depth Prediction Makes Feature Matching Easier

Good local features improve the robustness of many 3D re-localization and multi-view reconstruction pipelines. The problem is that viewing angle and distance severely impact the recognizability of a local feature. Attempts to improve appearance invariance by choosing better local feature points or by leveraging outside information, have come with pre-requisites that made some of them impractical. In this paper, we propose a surprisingly effective enhancement to local feature extraction, which improves matching. We show that CNN-based depths inferred from single RGB images are quite helpful, despite their flaws. They allow us to pre-warp images and rectify perspective distortions, to significantly enhance SIFT and BRISK features, enabling more good matches, even when cameras are looking at the same scene but in opposite directions.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication at the European conference on computer vision (ECCV) 202

Consensus on a netball video analysis framework of descriptors and definitions by the netball video analysis consensus group.

Using an expert consensus-based approach, a netball video analysis consensus (NVAC) group of researchers and practitioners was formed to develop a video analysis framework of descriptors and definitions of physical, technical and contextual aspects for netball research. The framework aims to improve the consistency of language used within netball investigations. It also aims to guide injury mechanism reporting and identification of injury risk factors. The development of the framework involved a systematic review of the literature and a Delphi process. In conjunction with commercially used descriptors and definitions, 19 studies were used to create the initial framework of key descriptors and definitions in netball. In a two round Delphi method consensus, each expert rated their level of agreement with each of the descriptors and associated definition on a 5-point Likert scale (1-strongly disagree; 2-somewhat disagree; 3-neither agree nor disagree; 4-somewhat agree; 5-strongly agree). The median (IQR) rating of agreement was 5.0 (0.0), 5.0 (0.0) and 5.0 (0.0) for physical, technical and contextual aspects, respectively. The NVAC group recommends usage of the framework when conducting video analysis research in netball. The use of descriptors and definitions will be determined by the nature of the work and can be combined to incorporate further movements and actions used in netball. The framework can be linked with additional data, such as injury surveillance and microtechnology data

Global overview of the management of acute cholecystitis during the COVID-19 pandemic (CHOLECOVID study)

Background: This study provides a global overview of the management of patients with acute cholecystitis during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: CHOLECOVID is an international, multicentre, observational comparative study of patients admitted to hospital with acute cholecystitis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data on management were collected for a 2-month study interval coincident with the WHO declaration of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and compared with an equivalent pre-pandemic time interval. Mediation analysis examined the influence of SARS-COV-2 infection on 30-day mortality. Results: This study collected data on 9783 patients with acute cholecystitis admitted to 247 hospitals across the world. The pandemic was associated with reduced availability of surgical workforce and operating facilities globally, a significant shift to worse severity of disease, and increased use of conservative management. There was a reduction (both absolute and proportionate) in the number of patients undergoing cholecystectomy from 3095 patients (56.2 per cent) pre-pandemic to 1998 patients (46.2 per cent) during the pandemic but there was no difference in 30-day all-cause mortality after cholecystectomy comparing the pre-pandemic interval with the pandemic (13 patients (0.4 per cent) pre-pandemic to 13 patients (0.6 per cent) pandemic; P = 0.355). In mediation analysis, an admission with acute cholecystitis during the pandemic was associated with a non-significant increased risk of death (OR 1.29, 95 per cent c.i. 0.93 to 1.79, P = 0.121). Conclusion: CHOLECOVID provides a unique overview of the treatment of patients with cholecystitis across the globe during the first months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The study highlights the need for system resilience in retention of elective surgical activity. Cholecystectomy was associated with a low risk of mortality and deferral of treatment results in an increase in avoidable morbidity that represents the non-COVID cost of this pandemic