Prognostic Factors Affecting Outcome after Allogeneic Transplantation for Hematological Malignancies from Unrelated Donors : Results from a Randomized Trial

Several prognostic factors for the outcome after allogeneic hematopoietic stem-cell transplant (HSCT) from matched unrelated donors have been postulated from registry data; however, data from randomized trials are lacking. We present analyses on the effects of patient-related, donor-related, and treatment-related prognostic factors on acute GVHD (aGVHD), chronic GVHD (cGVHD), relapse, nonrelapse mortality (NRM), disease-free survival (DFS), and overall survival (OS) in a randomized, multicenter, open-label, phase III trial comparing standard graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) prophylaxis with and without pretransplantation ATG-Fresenius (ATG-F) in 201 adult patients receiving myeloablative conditioning before HSCT from HLA-A, HLA-B antigen, HLA-DRB1, HLA-DQB1 allele matched unrelated donors. High-resolution testing (allele) of HLA-A, HLA-B, and HLA-C were obtained after study closure, and the impact of an HLA 10/10 4-digit mismatch on outcome and on the treatment effect of ATG-F versus control investigated. Advanced disease was a negative factor for relapse, DFS, and OS. Donor age ≥40 adversely affected the risk of aGVHD III-IV, extensive cGVHD, and OS. Younger donors are to be preferred in unrelated donor transplantation. Advanced disease patients need special precautions to improve outcome. The degree of mismatch had no major influence on the positive effect of ATG-F on the reduction of aGVHD and cGVHD. © 2012 American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation

Region-Based Guaranteed Image Quality in JPEG2000

This paper describes a spatially variant method that optimises the compression rate within a given image dynamically depending on the application specific requirements and the actual image content. The concept utilises the JPEG2000 standard, however, a generalised region-of-interest (ROI) map is used in this paper together with a different post-compression rate distortion optimisation. The generalised ROI map comprises a multi-level priority scheme as well as continuously adjustable qualities for each individual region to reflect the application specific requirements for a particular image. The key point is that these pre-defined quality constraints are always met for each individual region, thus making the approach suitable for data with inherent reliability requirements. The implementation of the proposed system is transparent and concerns only the encoder side while any standard JPEG2000 decoder can be used for decompression. Results have shown that for the utilised imagery, i.e. satellite and medical images, compression rate improvements of up to 32% in comparison to the JPEG2000 compressor fulfilling the same quality needs are achievable