Diagnostic Performances of Ultrasound-Based Models for Predicting Malignancy in Patients with Adnexal Masses

This study compared the diagnostic performance of different ultrasound-based models in discriminating between benign and malignant ovarian masses in a Filipino population. This was a prospective cohort study in women with findings of an ovarian mass on ultrasound. All included patients underwent a physical examination before level III specialist ultrasonographic and Doppler evaluation using the different International Ovarian Tumor Analysis (IOTA) Group’s risk models. Serum CA-125 and a second-generation multivariate index assay (MIA2G) were also determined for all patients. The ovarian imaging and biomarker results were correlated with the histological findings. A total of 260 patients with completed ultrasound, CA-125, MIA2G, and histopathologic results was included in the study. The presence of papillae with blood flow and irregular cyst walls during the ultrasound were significantly associated with a 20-fold (OR: 20.13, CI: 8.69–46.67, p p < 0.01) increase in the likelihood of a malignant lesion, respectively. All individual sonologic procedures performed well in discerning malignant and benign ovarian lesions. IOTA-LR1 showed the highest accuracy (82.6%, 95% CI: 77.5–87%) for identifying ovarian cancer. IOTA-ADNEX showed the highest sensitivity (93.3%, 95% CI: 87.2–97.1%) while IOTA-LR2 exhibited the highest specificity (84.4%, 95% CI: 77.3–90%). Among the different serial test combinations, IOTA-LR1 with MIA2G and IOTA-LR2 with MIA2G showed the highest diagnostic accuracy (AUROC = 0.82). This study showed that all individual ultrasound-based models performed well in discerning malignant and benign ovarian lesions, with IOTA-LR1 exhibiting the highest accuracy

A new segmented-beat modulation algorithm for maternal ECG estimation from abdominal recordings

The noninvasive fetal electrocardiogram (fECG) provides precious information about the physiological fetus state. It is extracted from abdominal recordings, obtained positioning surface electrodes on the maternal abdomen, by subtraction of the maternal ECG (mECG), often roughly estimated by simply concatenating a maternal-beat template. Aim of the present study is to propose a new algorithm for the mECG estimation based on a segmented-beat modulation method (SBMM) that adjusts the template length to the maternal physiological heart-rate variability (HRV) and reduces the level of noise. According to the SBMM, each maternal cardiac cycle (CC) is segmented into two segments, QRS and TUP, respectively independent and proportional to preceding RR interval. The estimated mECG is the concatenation of the template-beat, obtained as the median of the maternal beat after modulation and demodulation of TUP segment. The algorithm was applied to two (ARec1 and ARec2) 4-channel abdominal recordings obtained from pregnant women. ARec1 and ARec2 were both 60 s long and characterized by similar heart rate (HR: 80 bpm and 82 bpm) but different HRV (42 ms vs. 139 ms). Results indicate that the error in the mECG estimation is always small (<2.5 μV) but increases with HRV (ARec1: 0.87–1.65 μV; ARec2: 1.98–2.37 μV). In conclusion, the proposed algorithm based on the SBMM allows a clean mECG estimation from abdominal recordings thanks to a modulation procedure introduced to track physiological variation in the maternal heart rhythm

Effects of an Educational Computing Course on Preservice and Inservice Teachers

This study examined the changes in preservice and inservice teachers’ attitudes toward computers following their participation in an educational computing class, and it explored the factors that contributed to their computer use. The study used data from 114 preservice and inservice teachers (83 female, 31 male) who attended a university in southern California. Results of doubly multivariate repeated measures indicated that teachers’ attitudes (anxiety, confidence, and liking) significantly improved after the computer literacy course. The follow-up study indicated that teachers’ prior computer experience shaped their expectations of the course. Teachers reported that having a home computer, a professor’s willingness to teach, and the current use of technology in the schools at which they work also influenced their attitudes toward and use of computers