Quantitative flow ratio-guided surgical intervention in symptomatic myocardial bridging

Background: Patients with myocardial bridging (MB) are associated with adverse cardiovascular events, but a decision to perform surgical intervention, especially for patients with systolic intermediate stenosis, is a difficult clinical issue. Fractional flow reserve (FFR) represents a novel method for the functional evaluation of coronary stenosis, but the relationship between FFR and MB remains controversial because of the cyclic dynamic stenosis of MB. Quantitative flow ratio (QFR) is a novel index allowing fast assessment of FFR from a diagnostic coronary angiography. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between QFR and MB patients and to further develop a prediction model of QFR-guided surgical intervention for these patients.Methods: Forty-five symptomatic lone MB patients who had undergone coronary angiography were consecutively enrolled in this study. MB was located in the middle of left anterior descending artery with intermediate stenosis during systole. The patients were retrospectively divided into a medical therapy group or a surgical therapy group. Systolic geometry based QFR (SG-QFR) and diastolic geometry based QFR (DG-QFR) were calculated based on three-dimensional quantitative coronary angiography and patient-specific flow velocity. Subsequently, time-averaged QFR (TA-QFR) is defined as the average of SG-QFR and DG-QFR.Results: Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis revealed that TA-QFR (AUC = 0.91; 95% CI: 0.79–0.98) was found to be the best pre-operative index for surgical intervention to MB, when compared with DG-QFR (AUC = 0.69; 95% CI: 0.53–0.82; difference: 0.22; 95% CI: 0.04–0.41; p = 0.02) and SG-QFR (AUC = 0.87; 95% CI: 0.74–0.95; difference: 0.04; 95% CI: 0.00–0.08; p = 0.03).Conclusions: TA-QFR improved the performance of functional evaluation in MB patients with intermediate stenosis during systole and is useful for guiding surgical intervention

An improved saliency detection algorithm based on Itti’s model

Kad ljudi promatraju slike, mehanizam vizualne pažnje (VAM) automatski zanemaruje nepotrebnu informaciju i pažnju usmjerava na najvažnije predmete. Postoje brojni računalni modeli za otkrivanje najistaknutijeg područja slike usmjeravanjem pažnje od dna slike prema gore. U ovom se radu predlaže poboljšani računalni model vizualne pažnje zasnovan na Itti modelu, a sastoji se od tri komponente. Najprije se s značajke nižeg nivoa osnovne slike izdvajaju iz područja boje CIELa*b* umjesto područja boje RGB; poslije toga se značajke slike rastavljaju u valićaste piramide pomoću valićaste osnove višeskalne pretvorbe. Kao treće, primjenjuje se nova strategija za sastavljanje svih upadljivih linija u završnu mapu istaknutih elemenata s različitim težinama, koje su proporcionalne doprinosu svake pojedinačne istaknute karakteristike. U usporedbi s Itti modelom, exsperimenti dokazuju da je pristup predložen u ovome radu učinkovitiji.Visual attention mechanism (VAM) automatically ignores the superfluous information and pays attention to the most significant objects when people are watching the pictures. There are numerous bottom-up visual attention computational models to detect the salient area of an image. In this paper, an improved visual attention computational model based on Itti’s model is proposed, which is comprised of three components. Firstly, the lower-level primitive image features s are extracted from CIELa*b* color space instead of RGB color space; secondly, the feature images are decomposed into wavelet pyramids by wavelet-based multi-scale transform. Thirdly, a new strategy is used to combine all conspicuity maps into a final saliency map with different weights, which are proportional to the contribution of each conspicuity map. Compared with Itti’s models, subjective experiments prove that the approach proposed in this paper is more effective

An improved saliency detection algorithm based on Itti’s model

Kad ljudi promatraju slike, mehanizam vizualne pažnje (VAM) automatski zanemaruje nepotrebnu informaciju i pažnju usmjerava na najvažnije predmete. Postoje brojni računalni modeli za otkrivanje najistaknutijeg područja slike usmjeravanjem pažnje od dna slike prema gore. U ovom se radu predlaže poboljšani računalni model vizualne pažnje zasnovan na Itti modelu, a sastoji se od tri komponente. Najprije se s značajke nižeg nivoa osnovne slike izdvajaju iz područja boje CIELa*b* umjesto područja boje RGB; poslije toga se značajke slike rastavljaju u valićaste piramide pomoću valićaste osnove višeskalne pretvorbe. Kao treće, primjenjuje se nova strategija za sastavljanje svih upadljivih linija u završnu mapu istaknutih elemenata s različitim težinama, koje su proporcionalne doprinosu svake pojedinačne istaknute karakteristike. U usporedbi s Itti modelom, exsperimenti dokazuju da je pristup predložen u ovome radu učinkovitiji.Visual attention mechanism (VAM) automatically ignores the superfluous information and pays attention to the most significant objects when people are watching the pictures. There are numerous bottom-up visual attention computational models to detect the salient area of an image. In this paper, an improved visual attention computational model based on Itti’s model is proposed, which is comprised of three components. Firstly, the lower-level primitive image features s are extracted from CIELa*b* color space instead of RGB color space; secondly, the feature images are decomposed into wavelet pyramids by wavelet-based multi-scale transform. Thirdly, a new strategy is used to combine all conspicuity maps into a final saliency map with different weights, which are proportional to the contribution of each conspicuity map. Compared with Itti’s models, subjective experiments prove that the approach proposed in this paper is more effective

Inhibitory effect of microRNA34a on retinal pigment epithelial cell proliferation and migration,”

Citation: Hou Q, Tang J, Wang Z, et al. Inhibitory effect of microRNA-34a on retinal pigment epithelial cell proliferation and migration. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2013;54:6481-6488. DOI:10.1167/iovs.13-11873 PURPOSE. Retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells play important roles in ophthalmologic diseases such as proliferative vitreoretinopathy, AMD, and diabetic retinopathy. MicroRNA34a (miR-34a) has been reported to be important in the regulation of cell proliferation, migration, differentiation, and apoptosis. In this study, we explored the effects of miR-34a on RPE cells. METHODS. The expression level of miR-34a in subconfluent and postconfluent ARPE-19 cells was investigated with quantitative real-time PCR. MicroRNA mimic and small interfering RNA (siRNA) were transiently transfected into RPE cells. Transfected RPE cells were analyzed with WST-1 proliferation assay, and their migration was analyzed with transwell assay and in vitro scratch study. The expression or activation of target proteins was detected by Western blotting. RESULTS. MicroRNA-34a was significantly downregulated in subconfluent ARPE-19 cells compared with postconfluent cells. Introduction of miR-34a inhibited the proliferation and migratory ability of RPE cells without obvious cell apoptosis. In miR-34a transfected cells, many important proliferation and/or migration related molecules such as c-Met, CDK2, CDK4, CDK6, E2F1, and phosphorylated-Cdc2 (p-Cdc2) were downregulated. Small interfering RNA designed to target c-Met also inhibited the proliferation and migration of RPE cells and downregulated CDK2, CDK6, E2F1, and p-Cdc2. CONCLUSIONS. MicroRNA-34a is downregulated in subconfluent RPE cells. MicroRNA-34a can inhibit the proliferation and migration of RPE cells through downregulation of its targets c-Met and other cell cycle-related molecules. Our results indicated that miR-34a is involved in the regulation of RPE cells

GPR48-Induced keratinocyte proliferation occurs through HB-EGF mediated EGFR transactivation

AbstractGPR48 can mediate keratinocyte proliferation and migration. Our investigations showed that AG1478, an inhibitor of EGFR tyrosine kinase, could block GPR48-mediated cellular processes. AG1478 treatment of Gpr48+/+ cells also decreased phosphorylation of EGFR, ERK and STAT3. Subsequent screening using conditioned media immunodepleted of EGFR ligands identified HB-EGF as the ligand responsible for phosphorylation of EGFR, ERK and STAT3. HB-EGF was reduced in Gpr48−/− cell culture medium, but its addition restored the phosphorylation of EGFR, ERK, STAT3, as well as cell proliferation. Confirmation that GPR48 mediates EGFR signaling pathway through HB-EGF was subsequently performed using an inhibitor of HB-EGF

Lignin metabolism has a central role in the resistance of cotton to the wilt fungus Verticillium dahliae as revealed by RNA-Seq-dependent transcriptional analysis and histochemistry

The incompatible pathosystem between resistant cotton (Gossypium barbadense cv. 7124) and Verticillium dahliae strain V991 was used to study the cotton transcriptome changes after pathogen inoculation by RNA-Seq. Of 32 774 genes detected by mapping the tags to assembly cotton contigs, 3442 defence-responsive genes were identified. Gene cluster analyses and functional assignments of differentially expressed genes indicated a significant transcriptional complexity. Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) was performed on selected genes with different expression levels and functional assignments to demonstrate the utility of RNA-Seq for gene expression profiles during the cotton defence response. Detailed elucidation of responses of leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinases (LRR-RLKs), phytohormone signalling-related genes, and transcription factors described the interplay of signals that allowed the plant to fine-tune defence responses. On the basis of global gene regulation of phenylpropanoid metabolism-related genes, phenylpropanoid metabolism was deduced to be involved in the cotton defence response. A closer look at the expression of these genes, enzyme activity, and lignin levels revealed differences between resistant and susceptible cotton plants. Both types of plants showed an increased level of expression of lignin synthesis-related genes and increased phenylalanine-ammonia lyase (PAL) and peroxidase (POD) enzyme activity after inoculation with V. dahliae, but the increase was greater and faster in the resistant line. Histochemical analysis of lignin revealed that the resistant cotton not only retains its vascular structure, but also accumulates high levels of lignin. Furthermore, quantitative analysis demonstrated increased lignification and cross-linking of lignin in resistant cotton stems. Overall, a critical role for lignin was believed to contribute to the resistance of cotton to disease