Baseline characteristics of patients in the reduction of events with darbepoetin alfa in heart failure trial (RED-HF)

<p>Aims: This report describes the baseline characteristics of patients in the Reduction of Events with Darbepoetin alfa in Heart Failure trial (RED-HF) which is testing the hypothesis that anaemia correction with darbepoetin alfa will reduce the composite endpoint of death from any cause or hospital admission for worsening heart failure, and improve other outcomes.</p> <p>Methods and results: Key demographic, clinical, and laboratory findings, along with baseline treatment, are reported and compared with those of patients in other recent clinical trials in heart failure. Compared with other recent trials, RED-HF enrolled more elderly [mean age 70 (SD 11.4) years], female (41%), and black (9%) patients. RED-HF patients more often had diabetes (46%) and renal impairment (72% had an estimated glomerular filtration rate <60 mL/min/1.73 m2). Patients in RED-HF had heart failure of longer duration [5.3 (5.4) years], worse NYHA class (35% II, 63% III, and 2% IV), and more signs of congestion. Mean EF was 30% (6.8%). RED-HF patients were well treated at randomization, and pharmacological therapy at baseline was broadly similar to that of other recent trials, taking account of study-specific inclusion/exclusion criteria. Median (interquartile range) haemoglobin at baseline was 112 (106–117) g/L.</p> <p>Conclusion: The anaemic patients enrolled in RED-HF were older, moderately to markedly symptomatic, and had extensive co-morbidity.</p&gt

Shape Matching Based on Fully Automatic Face Detection on Triangular Meshes

This paper tackles a particular shape matching problem: given a data base of shapes (described as triangular meshes), we search for all shapes which describe a human. We do so by applying a 3D face detection approach on the mesh which consists of three steps: first, a local symmetry value is computed for each vertex. Then, the symmetry values in a certain neighborhood of each vertex are analyzed for building sharp symmetry lines. Finally, the geometry around each vertex is analyzed to get further facial features like nose and forehead. We tested our approach with several shape data bases (e.g. the Princeton Shape Benchmark) and achieved high rates of correct face detection

Volume-preserving Mesh Skinning

Light transport in complex scenes with possibly intricate optical properties is difficult to grasp intuitively. The study of light transport has so far mainly been conducted by indirect observations. Cameras or human observers typically only sense the radiance reflected from a scene, i.e. the light directly emitted or reflected from the last bounce of a possibly much longer light path. Models for the propagation of light, however, typically assume light waves or rays, concepts which so far have been communicated in an abstract way using formulas or sketches. In this paper, we propose the use of fluorescent fluids for direct visualization of light transport in the real world. In the fluorescent fluid the traces of light become visible as a small fraction of the energy transported along the ray is scattered out towards the viewer. We demonstrate this visualization for direct illumination effects such as reflections and refractions at various surfaces, as well as for global effects such as subsurface light transport in translucent material, caustics, or interreflections. As this allows for the inspection of entire light paths, rather than the last scattering event, we believe that this novel visualization can help to intuitively explain the phenomena of light transport to students and experts alike

Implicit Boundary Control of Vector Field Based Shape Deformations

Abstract. We present a shape deformation approach which preserves volume, prevents self-intersections and allows for exact control of the deformation impact. Volume preservation and prevention of self-intersections are achieved by utilizing the method of Vector Field Based Shape Deformations. This method produces physically plausible deformations efficiently by integrating formally constructed divergence-free vector fields, where the region of influence is described by implicitly defined shapes. We introduce an implicit representation of deformation boundaries, which allows for an exact control of the deformation: By placing the boundaries directly on the shape surface, the user can specify precisely where the shape should be deformed and where not. The simple polygonal representation of the boundaries allows for a GPU implementation, which is able to deform high-resolution meshes in real-time.

Intrinsic Point Cloud Interpolation via Dual Latent Space Navigation

We present a learning-based method for interpolating and manipulating 3D shapes represented as point clouds, that is explicitly designed to preserve intrinsic shape properties. Our approach is based on constructing a dual encoding space that enables shape synthesis and, at the same time, provides links to the intrinsic shape information, which is typically not available on point cloud data. Our method works in a single pass and avoids expensive optimization, employed by existing techniques. Furthermore, the strong regularization provided by our dual latent space approach also helps to improve shape recovery in challenging settings from noisy point clouds across different datasets. Extensive experiments show that our method results in more realistic and smoother interpolations compared to baselines