Comparison of Scalpel and Diode Laser in Management of Gingival Enlargement: A Case Report

Inflammatory gingival enlargement is an excessive growth of gingival tissue due to inflammation in response to plaque accumulation. Enlargement of gingiva hampers the efficiency of daily oral hygiene practices which in turn accumulates more plaque, thus causing inflammation. Phase I therapy, consisting of scaling and root planning only reduces the inflammatory component of the enlarged gingival tissues but the fibrotic gingival enlargement remaining thereafter is then removed surgically by gingivectomy. Apart from the conventional scalpel gingivectomy, many other treatment modalities such as gingivectomy by lasers and electrocautery are now being widely used in the field of surgical periodontal therapy. This case report describes the management of gingival enlargement in relation with gingivae of maxillary teeth by administering separate treatment modalities i.e. diode laser and conventional scalpel gingivectomy

A comparative study for antinociceptive potential of vitamin D3 with diclofenac in animal models

Background: Calcitriol is one of the active forms of vitamin D. It not only acts on calcium metabolism but might have a role in treating various disorders also through vitamin D receptors that are present in many tissues besides intestine and bone. This study was conducted to compare antinociceptive activity of Calcitriol with Diclofenac and Morphine in animal models.Methods: In this study, healthy Swiss albino mice were taken after permission from IAEC. Mice were divided into six groups as one control- treated with normal saline, two standards - treated with diclofenac and treated with morphine while three tests - treated with Calcitriol in dose of 15µg /kg/mice, 30µg/kg/mice and 60µg/kg/mice respectively. Comparison of antinociception was done using Tail pinch and writhing method.Results: Tail pinch and Writhing methods were used for comparison of antinociceptive activity. In tail pinch model, Calcitriol showed some analgesia at 30 and 60μg/Kg doses, which was more than control but not comparable with the standard Morphine. In writhing method, test doses of Calcitriol (15 and 30μg/Kg) failed to show analgesic efficacy in inflammatory pain but test dose of 60μg/Kg showed some analgesic activity which was not comparable with standard Diclofenac.Conclusions: Antinociception was exhibited at higher doses of Calcitriol by tail pinch method while in writhing method analgesic activity was shown with only 60 μg/Kg dose of Calcitriol. The results obtained from this study needs to be further evaluated by planning extensive animal experimentation

Comparative evaluation of autologous platelet rich plasma and triamcinolone acetonide injection in the management of erosive lichen planus and oral submucous fibrosis: a clinical study

Background: It is need of an hour to establish an effective and efficient treatment modality for OLP and OSMF with lesser or no adverse effects. Platelet rich plasma can be used in mucosal lesions as it has a high concentration of various growth factors and anti-inflammatory properties. It could be a better novel substitute to the corticosteroid without any side effects. The present study is an effort to evaluate the therapeutic effects of intralesional injection of PRP in oral erosive lichen planus and OSMF compared to intralesional corticosteroids in the same patient. Methods: It was a randomized controlled clinical study consisting of 40 patients between the age groups of 18-60 years visiting dental OPD diagnosed clinically with either erosive lichen planus or OSMF. Triamcinolone 40 mg(1mg/ml) mixed with 2% (1:80,000) lignocaine hydrochloride was injected into the lesion on one side in case of erosive lichen planus and into the submucosal plane and fibrous bands in case of OSMF patients. Autologous PRP was prepared and injected on the other side in same patients. At every visit, all the patients were evaluated for pain and burning sensations, size, and severity of the lesion, and interincisal mouth opening (mm). The parameters were measured and recorded during the patient’s every visit. All the results were obtained and statically analyzed. Results: Intralesional injections of triamcinolone acetonide and PRP are effective in reducing pain and burning sensation in OSMF, but PRP is less effective in improving cheek flexibility as compared to triamcinolone acetonide. In OLP, both triamcinolone acetonide and PRP are almost equally effective in reducing the size of the lesion. However, PRP shows slightly better results in reducing the severity of the lesion and in pain and burning sensation in the patients of OLP as compared to intralesional triamcinolone acetonide. Conclusions: Thus, PRP is an effective modality in treating both OSMF and oral erosive lichen planus with no adverse effects

An experimental study to evaluate and compare the analgesic activity of calcitriol with morphine in albino mice at a tertiary care teaching hospital in Maharashtra, India

Background: Vitamin D plays vital role in physiological functions in humans through its active form Calcitriol (Vitamin D3). Vitamin D receptors are found in most tissues, attributing to its classic and non-classic actions. Calcitriol exerts important regulatory effects on the molecular pathways involved in inflammation and pain. The present study is done for experimental evaluation of analgesic action of Calcitriol using pain models in albino mice.Methods: In this prospective, experimental study, healthy Swiss albino mice were taken after permission from IAEC. Mice were divided into five groups as Control- treated with normal saline, Standard- treated with morphine and Test groups- treated with Calcitriol in dose of 15 µg /kg/mice, 30 µg /kg/mice and 60 µg/kg/mice respectively. Evaluation of analgesic activity was done using Hot plate and Tail flick analgesiometer.Results: All the 3 test doses of Calcitriol although showed prolongation of reaction time in Hot plate method up to 60 mins but the analgesic activity was not significant in comparison with the standard Morphine. With Tail flick method Calcitriol failed to show any analgesic efficacy at 15-30 μg/Kg but showed some analgesia at 60 μg/Kg which was more than control but not at all comparable with the standard Morphine for thermal pain.Conclusions: The analgesic activity of Calcitriol was exhibited at higher doses. This property needs to be further evaluated by planning extensive animal experimentation using different animal models

An experimental study to evaluate the anti-inflammatory effect of moringa oleifera leaves in animal models

Background: Inflammatory diseases are a major cause of morbidity and disability of work force throughout the world. The treatment of inflammation with standard steroidal and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs shares the risk of toxicity on various organ systems. Moringa oleifera, an herbal plant has been claimed to be effective in the treatment of various types of inflammatory conditions. However, there is lack of scientific studies to ratify these claims. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to explore the anti-inflammatory activity of aqueous extract of leaves of Moringa oleifera (AEMO) in experimentally induced inflammation in albino rats.Methods: The study was commenced after obtaining approval from Institutional Animal Ethical Committee using AEMO leaves in Albino wistar rats (150-200 gm) of either sex. The anti-inflammatory activity was evaluated using carrageenan induced paw edema model, cotton pellet induced granuloma method and formaldehyde induced paw edema method. For each set of experiment, animals were divided in three groups of six animals each. In each experiment, 1st group was given normal saline (5 ml/kg/day), 2nd group was given standard anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone (0.5 mg/kg/day) and 3rd group was given Moringa oleifera (200 mg/kg/day).Results: Aqueous extract of Moringa oleifera leaves at dose of 200 mg/kg, p.o. exhibited the significant anti-inflammatory effect in all the models used in this study.Conclusions: It can be concluded from our study that aqueous extracts of Moringa oleifera leaves possess anti-inflammatory activity

Modular Neural Networks for Low-Power Image Classification on Embedded Devices

Embedded devices are generally small, battery-powered computers with limited hardware resources. It is difficult to run deep neural networks (DNNs) on these devices, because DNNs perform millions of operations and consume significant amounts of energy. Prior research has shown that a considerable number of a DNN’s memory accesses and computation are redundant when performing tasks like image classification. To reduce this redundancy and thereby reduce the energy consumption of DNNs, we introduce the Modular Neural Network Tree architecture. Instead of using one large DNN for the classifier, this architecture uses multiple smaller DNNs (called modules) to progressively classify images into groups of categories based on a novel visual similarity metric. Once a group of categories is selected by a module, another module then continues to distinguish among the similar categories within the selected group. This process is repeated over multiple modules until we are left with a single category. The computation needed to distinguish dissimilar groups is avoided, thus reducing redundant operations, memory accesses, and energy. Experimental results using several image datasets reveal the effectiveness of our proposed solution to reduce memory requirements by 50% to 99%, inference time by 55% to 95%, energy consumption by 52% to 94%, and the number of operations by 15% to 99% when compared with existing DNN architectures, running on two different embedded systems: Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi Zero

Camera Placement Meeting Restrictions of Computer Vision

In the blooming era of smart edge devices, surveillance cam- eras have been deployed in many locations. Surveillance cam- eras are most useful when they are spaced out to maximize coverage of an area. However, deciding where to place cam- eras is an NP-hard problem and researchers have proposed heuristic solutions. Existing work does not consider a signifi- cant restriction of computer vision: in order to track a moving object, the object must occupy enough pixels. The number of pixels depends on many factors (how far away is the object? What is the camera resolution? What is the focal length?). In this study we propose a camera placement method that not only identifies effective camera placement in arbitrary spaces, but can account for different camera types as well. Our strat- egy represents spaces as polygons, then uses a greedy algo- rithm to partition the polygons and determine the cameras’ lo- cations to provide desired coverage. The solution also makes it possible to perform object tracking via overlapping camera placement. Our method is evaluated against complex shapes and real-world museum floor plans, achieving up to 82% cov- erage and 28% overlap

Tree-based Unidirectional Neural Networks for Low-Power Computer Vision

This article describes the novel Tree-based Unidirectional Neural Network (TRUNK) architecture. This architecture improves computer vision efficiency by using a hierarchy of multiple shallow Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), instead of a single very deep CNN. We demonstrate this architecture’s versatility in performing different computer vision tasks efficiently on embedded devices. Across various computer vision tasks, the TRUNK architecture consumes 65% less energy and requires 50% less memory than representative low-power CNN architectures, e.g., MobileNet v2, when deployed on the NVIDIA Jetson Nano

Directed Acyclic Graph-based Neural Networks for Tunable Low-Power Computer Vision

Processing visual data on mobile devices has many applications, e.g., emergency response and tracking. State-of-the-art computer vision techniques rely on large Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) that are usually too power-hungry to be deployed on resource-constrained edge devices. Many techniques improve DNN efficiency of DNNs by compromising accuracy. However, the accuracy and efficiency of these techniques cannot be adapted for diverse edge applications with different hardware constraints and accuracy requirements. This paper demonstrates that a recent, efficient tree-based DNN architecture, called the hierarchical DNN, can be converted into a Directed Acyclic Graph-based (DAG) architecture to provide tunable accuracy-efficiency tradeoff options. We propose a systematic method that identifies the connections that must be added to convert the tree to a DAG to improve accuracy. We conduct experiments on popular edge devices and show that increasing the connectivity of the DAG improves the accuracy to within 1% of the existing high accuracy techniques. Our approach requires 93% less memory, 43% less energy, and 49% fewer operations than the high accuracy techniques, thus providing more accuracy-efficiency configurations