30 research outputs found
BPKD: Boundary Privileged Knowledge Distillation For Semantic Segmentation
Current knowledge distillation approaches in semantic segmentation tend to
adopt a holistic approach that treats all spatial locations equally. However,
for dense prediction, students' predictions on edge regions are highly
uncertain due to contextual information leakage, requiring higher spatial
sensitivity knowledge than the body regions. To address this challenge, this
paper proposes a novel approach called boundary-privileged knowledge
distillation (BPKD). BPKD distills the knowledge of the teacher model's body
and edges separately to the compact student model. Specifically, we employ two
distinct loss functions: (i) edge loss, which aims to distinguish between
ambiguous classes at the pixel level in edge regions; (ii) body loss, which
utilizes shape constraints and selectively attends to the inner-semantic
regions. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed BPKD method provides
extensive refinements and aggregation for edge and body regions. Additionally,
the method achieves state-of-the-art distillation performance for semantic
segmentation on three popular benchmark datasets, highlighting its
effectiveness and generalization ability. BPKD shows consistent improvements
across a diverse array of lightweight segmentation structures, including both
CNNs and transformers, underscoring its architecture-agnostic adaptability. The
code is available at \url{https://github.com/AkideLiu/BPKD}.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 9 table
Bone-Targeted Mesoporous Silica Nanocarrier Anchored by Zoledronate for Cancer Bone Metastasis
Once bone metastasis
occurs, the chances of survival and quality
of life for cancer patients decrease significantly. With the development
of nanomedicine, nanocarriers loading bisphosphonates have been built
to prevent cancer metastasis based on their enhanced permeability
and retention (EPR) effects; however, as a passive mechanism, the
EPR effects cannot apply to the metastatic sites because of their
lack of leaky vasculature. In this study, we fabricated 40 nm-sized
mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) anchored by zoledronic acid
(ZOL) for targeting bone sites and delivered the antitumor drug doxorubicin
(DOX) in a spatiotemporally controlled manner. The DOX loading and
release behaviors, bone-targeting ability, cellular uptake and its
mechanisms, subcellular localization, cytotoxicity, and the antimigration
effect of this drug delivery system (DDS) were investigated. The results
indicated that MSNsâZOL had better bone-targeting ability compared
with that of the nontargeted MSNs. The maximum loading capacity of
DOX into MSNs and MSNsâZOL was about 1671 and 1547 mg/g, with
a loading efficiency of 83.56 and 77.34%, respectively. DOX@MSNsâZOL
had obvious pH-sensitive DOX release behavior. DOX@MSNsâZOL
entered into cells through an ATP-dependent pathway and then localized
in the lysosome to achieve effective intracellular DOX release. The
antitumor results indicated that DOX@MSNsâZOL exhibited the
best cytotoxicity against A549 cells and significantly decreased cell
migration in vitro. This DDS is promising for the treatment of cancer
bone metastasis in the future
Defect-Related Luminescent Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles Employed for Novel Detectable Nanocarrier
Uniform and well-dispersed walnut
kernel-like mesoporous silica
nanoparticles (MSNs) with diameters about 100 nm have been synthesized
by a templating solâgel route. After an annealing process,
the as-obtained sample (DLMSNs) inherits the well-defined morphology
and good dispersion of MSNs, and exhibits bright white-blue luminescence,
higher specific surface area and pore volume, and better biocompatibility.
The drug loading and release profiles show that DLMSNs have high drug
loading capacity, and exhibit an initial burst release followed by
a slow sustained release process. Interestingly, the luminescence
intensity of the DLMSNs-DOX system increases gradually with the increase
of cumulative released DOX, which can be verified by the confocal
laser scanning images. The drug carrier DLMSNs can potentially be
applied as a luminescent probe for monitoring the drug release process.
Moreover, the DLMSNs-DOX system exhibits potent anticancer effect
against three kinds of cancer cells (HeLa, MCF-7, and A549 cells)
Up-Conversion Y<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>:Yb<sup>3+</sup>,Er<sup>3+</sup> Hollow Spherical Drug Carrier with Improved Degradability for Cancer Treatment
The rare earth hollow
spheres with up-conversion luminescence properties have shown potential
applications in drug delivery and bioimaging fields. However, there
have been few reports for the degradation properties of rare earth
oxide drug carriers. Herein, uniform and well-dispersed Y<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>:Yb<sup>3+</sup>,Er<sup>3+</sup> hollow spheres (YOHSs)
have been fabricated by a general Pechini solâgel process with
melamine formaldehyde colloidal spheres as template. The novel YOHSs
with up-conversion luminescence has good drug loading amount and drug-release
efficiency; moreover, it exhibits pH-responsive release patterns.
In particular, the YOHSs sample exhibits low cytotoxicity and excellent
degradable properties in acid buffer. After the sample was loaded
with anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX), the antitumor result <i>in vitro</i> indicates that YOHS-DOX might be effective in cancer
treatment. The animal imaging test also reveals that the YOHSs drug
carrier can be used as an outstanding luminescent probe for bioimaging <i>in vivo</i> application prospects. The results suggest that
the degradable drug carrier with up-conversion luminescence may enhance
the delivery efficiency of drugs and improve the cancer therapy in
clinical applications