Utilisation of InSAR for Monitoring of Subsidence over Mining Caving Zones

The utilisation of InSAR techniques for the monitoring of subsidence over mining areas, employing open pit and underground mining methods, has a large potential due to inaccessibility and safety issues associated with the usage of classical surveying techniques. InSAR can also be very competitive concerning the cost of provided results. However, there are a few issues that may significantly limit InSAR applicability for subsidence monitoring in mining areas. The highly dynamic character of subsidence induced by mining, especially employing caving as a mining system, may lead to ambiguity issues. This could happen when the vertical movement between the neighbouring cells (pixels) of the SAR image is greater than quarter of the wavelength of a radar signal over the period between image acquisitions. The altered terrain topography, involving steep slopes and deep pits, may also lead to radar signal layover issues for specific satellite and pit slope geometry.In this paper the authors analyse the above-mentioned issues and present how the InSAR technology was applied as a help to monitor large scale and highly dynamic subsidence for a real case study in Western Australia. It was recognised that the analysis of ground deformation dynamics, based on topographical surveys, may provide a basis for the resolution of ambiguity issues existing in InSAR processing. Also, the new technique involving generation of a detailed DEM based on the current topographical surveys and pixel-by-pixel analysis were applied in order to identify a precise extent of layover areas

Assessment of related factors on delay in diagnosis of patients with smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis

Background: Approximately, one third of the world population is infected with tuberculosis (TB) germs and is put at risk of tuberculosis. Pulmonary tuberculosis accounts for more than 80 percent of cases, mostly in adults with positive sputum smear. The mortality and morbidity of the disease are associated with delay in diagnosis. Delay in diagnosis can be related to the patients or the health care system. Methods: In this historical cohort study, all the patients with smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis in Hamadan province from 21 March 2006 to 20 March 2012 were studied. Data on demographic characteristics, and clinical and treatment status of patients were extracted using patient registry software entitled TB Register. To determine the relationship between variables and the bacillus load, chi-square test was used. The logistic regression model was used to examine the co-effects of both variables on bacillus load of the patients at the time of the diagnosis. Data were analyzed using Stata11 software. Findings: From 440 patients with smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis, 51 (221 patients) were men and 49 (219 patients) were women. 57 (251 people) were living in urban and others in rural areas. The grade of sputum smear at the time of diagnosis was associated with area of residence, age group, and gender, that all were statistically significant. Delay in diagnosis among women, was approximately 0.55 of men and those in urban areas were 67 higher than in rural areas, which were both statistically significant. Conclusion: Individual factors play important role in delayed diagnosis, regarding that men are diagnosed later than the women. Screening programs in the workplace are recommended. Sensitization of private physicians would be effective in early identification of patients in urban areas. © 2015 Isfahan University of Medical Sciences(IUMS). All rights reserved

Global Ultrasound Elastography Using Convolutional Neural Network

Displacement estimation is very important in ultrasound elastography and failing to estimate displacement correctly results in failure in generating strain images. As conventional ultrasound elastography techniques suffer from decorrelation noise, they are prone to fail in estimating displacement between echo signals obtained during tissue distortions. This study proposes a novel elastography technique which addresses the decorrelation in estimating displacement field. We call our method GLUENet (GLobal Ultrasound Elastography Network) which uses deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to get a coarse time-delay estimation between two ultrasound images. This displacement is later used for formulating a nonlinear cost function which incorporates similarity of RF data intensity and prior information of estimated displacement. By optimizing this cost function, we calculate the finer displacement by exploiting all the information of all the samples of RF data simultaneously. The Contrast to Noise Ratio (CNR) and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of the strain images from our technique is very much close to that of strain images from GLUE. While most elastography algorithms are sensitive to parameter tuning, our robust algorithm is substantially less sensitive to parameter tuning.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; added acknowledgment section, submission type late

Patient safety in dentistry: development of a candidate 'never event' list for primary care

Introduction The 'never event' concept is often used in secondary care and refers to an agreed list of patient safety incidents that 'should not happen if the necessary preventative measures are in place'. Such an intervention may raise awareness of patient safety issues and inform team learning and system improvements in primary care dentistry. Objective To identify and develop a candidate never event list for primary care dentistry. Methods A literature review, eight workshops with dental practitioners and a modified Delphi with 'expert' groups were used to identify and agree candidate never events. Results Two-hundred and fifty dental practitioners suggested 507 never events, reduced to 27 distinct possibilities grouped across seven themes. Most frequently occurring themes were: 'checking medical history and prescribing' (119, 23.5%) and 'infection control and decontamination' (71, 14%). 'Experts' endorsed nine candidate never event statements with one graded as 'extreme risk' (failure to check past medical history) and four as 'high risk' (for example, extracting wrong tooth). Conclusion Consensus on a preliminary list of never events was developed. This is the first known attempt to develop this approach and an important step in determining its value to patient safety. Further work is necessary to develop the utility of this method

Tool Tracking in a Laparoscopic Virtual Reality Training System

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is replacing the open surgical approach to reduce pain, expedite patient recovery, shorten hospital stays and improve cosmetic results for many abdominal procedures. It is widely accepted that the increased technical difficulty of MIS approaches (difficult visualization, tool fulcrum effect, etc.) requires specialized surgical training. The fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery (FLS) program has become a de facto standard to evaluate surgical skills for laparoscopic MIS Simulation-based surgical training has been growing not only as an innovative way to teach surgery [2] but also as a method to assess the skill of a surgeon in performing a procedure, without risk to patients We use cameras to track tool motion [5], a general concept of the design and determination of appropriate workspace visualization were discussed. The fabrication process was explained and the first prototype was presented. In this paper, the computer vision and image processing aspects of the surgical simulator are described; these are used to detect the motion of the tool in the physical simulator and map these movements into a virtual surgical environment (Vizard, WorldViz, Santa Barbara, CA) for visualization. Pilot virtual simulation tasks are also described. Methods 2.1 Image-Based Tracking. An image-based method is used to send grasper motion data into the simulator by using video from a pair of cameras, which are calibrated using toolboxes available with MATLAB software. A pose estimation algorithm A four-colored marker is attached to the end of the grasper as shown in The red-blue-green color space is used to find the position of the markers against a white background as frames are streamed from the cameras. The differently colored markers are arranged to minimize occluded views and detect rotation about the tool shaft. The color threshold module is used to segment the colored dots in the images by using the MATLAB image processing toolbox. The colored dots are extracted by subtracting the channel color of the image from the grayscale of the images and extracting the pixels whose value exceeds the threshold. After calibrating the position of the cameras, the 3D positions of the markers are identified with respect to the 2D color-filtered images by applying a triangulation method. In this method, the nearest point from the projection line to the 3D position of the object is calculated, as illustrated in In the first step, we determine the direction of the 3D rays by calculating the unit vector pointing from the camera center to the object

Host specificity and species colouration mediate the regional decline of nocturnal moths in central European forests

The high diversity of insects has limited the volume of long-term community data with a high taxonomic resolution and considerable geographic replications, especially in forests. Therefore, trends and causes of changes are poorly understood. Here we analyse trends in species richness, abundance and biomass of nocturnal macro moths in three quantitative data sets collected over four decades in forests in southern Germany. Two local data sets, one from coppiced oak forests and one from high oak forests included 125K and 48K specimens from 559 and 532 species, respectively. A third regional data set, representing all forest types in the temperate zone of central Europe comprised 735K specimens from 848 species. Generalized additive mixed models revealed temporal declines in species richness (−38%), abundance (−53%) and biomass (−57%) at the regional scale. These were more pronounced in plant host specialists and in dark coloured species. In contrast, the local coppiced oak forests showed an increase, in species richness (+62%), while the high oak forests showed no clear trends. Left and right censoring as well as cross validation confirmed the robustness of the analyses, which led to four conclusions. First, the decline in insects appears in hyper diverse insect groups in forests and affects species richness, abundance and biomass. Second, the pronounced decline in host specialists suggests habitat loss as an important driver of the observed decline. Third, the more severe decline in dark species might be an indication of global warming as a potential driver. Fourth, the trends in coppiced oak forests indicate that maintaining complex and diverse forest ecosystems through active management may be a promising conservation strategy in order to counteract negative trends in biodiversity, alongside rewilding approaches

Geometric morphometric approach on the sexual dimorphism of Cydia pomonella (Lep.: Tortricidae) in the North West of Iran

In order to study the sexual dimorphism of codling moth, Cydia pomonella (L.), nine geographical populations were collected from four provinces, East Azarbayjan, West Azarbayjan, Ardebil and Zandjan, in the North West of Iran in autumn 2003. By transforming the landmark geometric data into partial warp scores, 26 and 18 scores were obtained for the fore and hind wings, respectively. Relative warp analysis was performed and wings relative variations in two sexes were determined. Allometry test was carried out after estimating centroid size of individuals. Population-sex interaction was significant in two wings. To determine the contribution of uniform and non-uniform shape variables in explaining populations and sexes differences, MANOVA was performed separately for each type of variables. The result revealed that the non-uniform variables were more effective in determining sex differences in different populations especially in the hind wing. Simple analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that the centroid size of females was significantly greater than that of males. Allometry test revealed non significant association between centroid size and wing shape variations in males and females. RWA showed well discrimination between sexes, especially based on the hind wing landmarks. Overall shape deformation indicated wider basal part of wing in females compared with males especially in the hind wing

Comparative reliability and diagnostic performance of conventional 3T magnetic resonance imaging and 1.5T magnetic resonance arthrography for the evaluation of internal derangement of the hip

Objective; To compare the diagnostic accuracy of conventional 3T MRI against 1.5T MR arthrography (MRA) in patients with clinical femoroacetabular impingement (FAI). Methods; Sixty-eight consecutive patients with clinical FAI underwent both 1.5T MRA and 3T MRI. Imaging was prospectively analysed by two musculoskeletal radiologists, blinded to patient outcomes and scored for internal derangement including labral and cartilage abnormality. Interobserver variation was assessed by kappa analysis. Thirty-nine patients subsequently underwent hip arthroscopy and surgical results and radiology findings were analysed. Results; Both readers had higher sensitivities for detecting labral tears with 3T MRI compared to 1.5T MRA (not statistically significant p=0.07). For acetabular cartilage defect both readers had higher statistically significant sensitivities using 3T MRI compared to 1.5T MRA (p=0.02). Both readers had a slightly higher sensitivity for detecting delamination with 1.5T MRA compared to 3T MRI, but these differences were not statistically significant (p=0.66). Interobserver agreement was substantial to perfect agreement for all parameters except the identification of delamination (3T MRI showed moderate agreement and 1.5T MRA substantial agreement). Conclusion; Conventional 3T MRI may be at least equivalent to 1.5T MRA in detecting acetabular labrum and possibly superior to 1.5T MRA in detecting cartilage defects in patients with suspected FAI