Cross-tolerance to abiotic stresses in halophytes: Application for phytoremediation of organic pollutants

International audienceHalopytes are plants able to tolerate high salt concentrations but no clear definition was retained for them. In literature, there are more studies that showed salt-enhanced tolerance to other abiotic stresses compared to investigations that found enhanced salt tolerance by other abiotic stresses in halophytes. The phenomenon by which a plant resistance to a stress induces resistance to another is referred to as cross-tolerance. In this work, we reviewed cross-tolerance in halophytes at the physiological, biochemical, and molecular levels. A special attention was accorded to the cross-tolerance between salinity and organic pollutants that could allow halophytes a higher potential of xenobiotic phytoremediation in comparison with glycophytes

Carotid Intraplaque Neovascularization Quantification Software (CINQS)

Intraplaque neovascularization (IPN) is an important biomarker of atherosclerotic plaque vulnerability. As IPN can be detected by contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS), imaging-biomarkers derived from CEUS may allow early prediction of plaque vulnerability. To select the best quantitative imaging-biomarkers for prediction of plaque vulnerability, a systematic analysis of IPN with existing and new analysis algorithms is necessary. Currently available commercial contrast quantification tools are not applicable for quantitative analysis of carotid IPN due to substantial motion of the carotid artery, artifacts, and intermittent perfusion of plaques. We therefore developed a specialized software package called Carotid intraplaque neovascularization quantification software (CINQS). It was designed for effective and systematic comparison of sets of quantitative imaging biomarkers. CINQS includes several analysis algorithms for carotid IPN quantification and overcomes the limitations of current contrast quantification tools and existing carotid IPN quantification approaches. CINQS has a modular design which allows integrating new analysis tools. Wizard-like analysis tools and its graphical-user-interface facilitate its usage. In this paper, we describe the concept, analysis tools, and performance of CINQS and present analysis results of 45 plaques of 23 patients. The results in 45 plaques showed excellent agreement with visual IPN scores for two quantitative imaging-biomarkers (The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.92 and 0.93)

Improved segmentation of multiple cavities of the heart in wide-view 3-D transesophageal echocardiograms

Minimally invasive interventions in the heart such as in electrophysiology are becoming more and more important in clinical practice. Currently, preoperative computed tomography angiography (CTA) is used to provide anatomic information during electrophysiology interventions, but this does not provide real-time feedback and burdens the patient with additional radiation and side effects of the contrast agent. Three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) is an excellent modality for visualization of anatomic structures and instruments in real time, but some cavities, especially the left atrium, suffer from the limited coverage of the 3-D TEE volumes. This leads to difficulty in segmenting the left atrium. We propose replacing or complementing preoperative CTA imaging with wide-view TEE. We tested this proposal on 20 patients for which TEE image volumes covering the left atrium and CTA images were acquired. The TEE images were manually registered, and wide-view volumes were generated. Five heart cavities in single-view and wide-view TEE were segmented and compared with atlas based-segmentations derived from the CTA images. We found that the segmentation accuracy ( Dice coefficients) improved relative to segmentation of single-view images by 5, 15 and 9 percentage points for the left atrium, right atrium and aorta, respectively. Average anatomic coverage was improved by 2, 29, 62 and 49 percentage points for the right ventricle, left atrium, right atrium and aorta, respectively. This finding confirms that wide-view 3-D TEE can be useful in supporting electrophysiology interventions. (C) 2015 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology