Data Analysis and Tissue Type Assignment for Glioblastoma Multiforme

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is characterized by high infiltration. The interpretation of MRSI data, especially for GBMs, is still challenging. Unsupervised methods based on NMF by Li et al. (2013,NMR in Biomedicine) and Li et al. (2013,IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering) have been proposed for glioma recognition, but the tissue types is still not well interpreted. As an extension of the previous work, a tissue type assignment method is proposed for GBMs based on the analysis of MRSI data and tissue distribution information. The tissue type assignment method uses the values from the distribution maps of all three tissue types to interpret all the information in one new map and color encodes each voxel to indicate the tissue type. Experiments carried out onin vivoMRSI data show the feasibility of the proposed method. This method provides an efficient way for GBM tissue type assignment and helps to display information of MRSI data in a way that is easy to interpret.</jats:p

Multi-dimensional multiplexing optical secret sharing framework with cascaded liquid crystal holograms

Secret sharing is a promising technology for information encryption by splitting the secret information into different shares. However, the traditional scheme suffers from information leakage in decryption process since the amount of available information channels is limited. Herein, we propose and demonstrate an optical secret sharing framework based on the multi-dimensional multiplexing liquid crystal (LC) holograms. The LC holograms are used as spatially separated shares to carry secret images. The polarization of the incident light and the distance between different shares are served as secret keys, which can significantly improve the information security and capacity. Besides, the decryption condition is also restricted by the applied external voltage due to the variant diffraction efficiency, which further increases the information security. In implementation, an artificial neural network (ANN) model is developed to carefully design the phase distribution of each LC hologram. With the advantage of high security, high capacity and simple configuration, our optical secret sharing framework has great potentials in optical encryption and dynamic holographic display

Bacteroides acidifaciens and its derived extracellular vesicles improve DSS-induced colitis

Introduction“Probiotic therapy” to regulate gut microbiota and intervene in intestinal diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has become a research hotspot. Bacteroides acidifaciens, as a new generation of probiotics, has shown beneficial effects on various diseases.MethodsIn this study, we utilized a mouse colitis model induced by dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) to investigate how B. acidifaciens positively affects IBD. We evaluated the effects ofB. acidifaciens, fecal microbiota transplantation, and bacterial extracellular vesicles (EVs) on DSS-induced colitis in mice. We monitored the phenotype of mouse colitis, detected serum inflammatory factors using ELISA, evaluated intestinal mucosal barrier function using Western blotting and tissue staining, evaluated gut microbiota using 16S rRNA sequencing, and analyzed differences in EVs protein composition derived from B. acidifaciens using proteomics to explore how B. acidifaciens has a positive impact on mouse colitis.ResultsWe confirmed that B. acidifaciens has a protective effect on colitis, including alleviating the colitis phenotype, reducing inflammatory response, and improving intestinal barrier function, accompanied by an increase in the relative abundance of B. acidifaciens and Ruminococcus callidus but a decrease in the relative abundance of B. fragilis. Further fecal bacterial transplantation or fecal filtrate transplantation confirmed the protective effect of eosinophil-regulated gut microbiota and metabolites on DSS-induced colitis. Finally, we validated that EVs derived from B. acidifaciens contain rich functional proteins that can contribute to the relief of colitis.ConclusionTherefore, B. acidifaciens and its derived EVs can alleviate DSS-induced colitis by reducing mucosal damage to colon tissue, reducing inflammatory response, promoting mucosal barrier repair, restoring gut microbiota diversity, and restoring gut microbiota balance in mice. The results of this study provide a theoretical basis for the preclinical application of the new generation of probiotics

High-rate continuous-variable quantum key distribution over 100 km fiber with composable security

Quantum key distribution (QKD), providing a way to generate secret keys with information-theoretic security,is arguably one of the most significant achievements in quantum information. The continuous-variable QKD (CV-QKD) offers the potential advantage of achieving a higher secret key rate (SKR) within a metro area, as well as being compatible with the mature telecom industry. However, the SKR and transmission distance of state-of-the-art CV-QKD systems are currently limited. Here, based on the novelly proposed orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM) CV-QKD protocol, we demonstrate for the first time a high-rate multi-carrier (MC) CV-QKD with a 10 GHz symbol rate that chieves Gbps SKR within 10km and Mbps SKR over 100 km in the finite-size regime under composable security against collective attacks. The record-breaking results are achieved by suitable optimization of subcarrier number and modulation variance, well-controlled excess noise induced by both OFDM mechanism and efficient DSP scheme, and high-performance post-processing capacity realized by heterogeneous computing scheme. The composable finite-size SKR reaches 1779.45 Mbps@5km, 1025.49 Mbps@10km, 370.50 Mbps@25km, 99.93 Mbps@50km, 25.70 Mbps@75km,and 2.25 Mbps@100km, which improves the SKR by two orders of magnitude and quintuples the maximal transmission distance compared to most recently reported CV-QKD results [Nature Communications, 13, 4740 (2022)]. Interestingly, it is experimentally verified that the SKR of the proposed MC CV-QKD can approach five times larger than that of the single-carrier CV-QKD with the same symbol rate without additional hardware costs. Our work constitutes a critical step towards future high-speed quantum metropolitan and access networks

Monte Carlo calculations for reporting patient organ doses from interventional radiology

This paper describes a project to generate organ dose data for the purposes of extending VirtualDose software from CT imaging to interventional radiology (IR) applications. A library of 23 mesh-based anthropometric patient phantoms were involved in Monte Carlo simulations for database calculations. Organ doses and effective doses of IR procedures with specific beam projection, filed of view (FOV) and beam quality for all parts of body were obtained. Comparing organ doses for different beam qualities, beam projections, patients’ ages and patient’s body mass indexes (BMIs) which generated by VirtualDose-IR, significant discrepancies were observed. For relatively long time exposure, IR doses depend on beam quality, beam direction and patient size. Therefore, VirtualDose-IR, which is based on the latest anatomically realistic patient phantoms, can generate accurate doses for IR treatment. It is suitable to apply this software in clinical IR dose management as an effective tool to estimate patient doses and optimize IR treatment plans