Autofluoreszenz-Diagnostik bei Patienten mit Erkrankungen des Mund-Rachen-Kehlkopfbereiches

Zielsetzung: Karzinome des oberen Aerodiggestivtraktes (OADT) sind nach wie vor die 5. häufigste Krebsart weltweit. Eine frühzeitige Diagnose wird oft verzögert, da Tumorvorstufen oder Präkanzerosen makroskopisch nicht so leicht nachweisbar sind, und mit Hilfe herkömmlicher Bildgebender Verfahren nicht immer erfasst werden können. Autofluoreszenzendoskopie könnte zur Verbesserung der Erkennung und Abgrenzung dieser frühen Läsionen beitragen. Methode: In dieser laufenden Studie sind 158 Patienten mit Verdacht auf einer (prä-) malignen Läsion des oberen Aerodiggestivtraktes untersucht worden. Die Autofluoreszenz – Endoskopie ist mit Hilfe der Autofluoreszenz – Apparatur der Fa. Karl – Storz (Tuttlingen, Deutschland) durchgeführt worden. Sie besteht aus einer Xenon – Kurzbogenlampe, die Weiß- und violettes Autofluoreszenzlicht produziert (λ=375-440 nm), einem modifizierten Endoskop (0°-/30°-/70°-/90°-Optik) mit wahlweise einschwenkbaren Beobachtungsfiltern, welches der Beleuchtung und Betrachtung des Gewebes diente, und einer integrierbaren CCD – Kamera. Insgesamt sind 281 Biopsien aus Tumor und angrenzendem Normalgewebe entnommen worden für eine histopathologische Korrelation. Ergebnisse: Die Autofluoreszenzendoskopie ist bei allen Patienten gut toleriert worden. Die grüne Autofluoreszenz war bei neoplastischem, (prä-) malignem und entzündlichem Gewebe deutlich reduziert, was die Abgrenzung gegenüber dem gesunden Gewebe ermöglicht hat. Mit einer Kombination aus Weißlicht- und Autofluoreszenzendoskopie sind insgesamt 10 zusätzliche (prä-) maligne Läsionen nachgewiesen worden. Die histopathologische Korrelation der Ergebnisse zeigte eine Sensitivität von 92% für die Autofluoreszenz – Untersuchung gegenüber 95.7% für die Weißlicht – Endoskopie. Schlussfolgerungen: Aus unserer Erfahrung ist die Autofluoreszenz – Endoskopie ein viel versprechendes, einfach durchzuführendes, jedoch unspezifisches diagnostisches Hilfsmittel für die Früherkennung und Abgrenzung oberflächlicher Schleimhautläsionen. In Kombination mit anderen Bildgebenden Verfahren könnte sie eine umfassende, nicht – invasive Frühdiagnostik von (prä-) malignen Veränderungen des OADT ermöglichen

Research students exhibition catalogue 2011

The catalogue demonstrates the scope and vibrancy of current inquiries and pays tribute to the creative capacity and investment of UCA research students. It brings together contributions from students who are at different stages in their research ad/venture. Their explorations are connected by the centrality of contemporary material practices as focal point for the reconsideration of societal values, cultural symbols and rituals and their meaning, and the trans/formation of individual, collective and national identities The media and formats employed range from cloth, jewellery and ceramics to analogue film, the human voice and the representation of dress and fashionin virtual environments. Thematic interests span from explorations at the interface of art and medical science to an investigation of the role of art in contested spaces, or the role of metonymy in ‘how the arts think’ And whilst the projects are motivated by personal curiosity and passion, their outcomes transcend the boundaries of individual practice and offer new insights, under-standing and applications for the benefit of wider society. Prof. Kerstin Me

Identity through dress in virtual environments

The thesis explores how avatarial dress affects the identity of the player while playing a video game

Syndesis: Linking the Representational and Simulational Qualities of Digital Dress.

In this research, I argue that the involvement of the participant in a digital 3D space is of a performative psychological/sociological nature, and I employ social realist ideology to connect programmatic syntax to meaningful and political semiologic rhetoric. I call this connection syndesis, and I combine it with the encyclopaedic multiplicity that digital environments inherently offer to produce an abstract but stable, organic, and procedurally self-expanding model of the fashion system. The practical outcome of this research is a study in designing and producing a game that utilises dress as its exclusive gameplay factor. I call this artefact Mannequin, and in it, play progresses through social interaction facilitated by choice of dress within a semiotic/programmatic model of the fashion system

Identity through Fashion in Virtual Environments

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the formation of identity through dress in virtual environments, and to establish connections between identity, fashion, and virtual reality by means of language and semiology. The notion of identity through fashion in virtual environments is examined, with fashion as a factor in identity formation through dress as analysed in structuralist terms. The virtual aspect is used both as a literal field, i.e. the medium of video games and social networks that involve virtual avatars, and as theoretical testing ground from which to derive new results on the nature of dress and many of the aspects of clothing and fashion. The practical outcome of this research, a video game based on dress and narrative, serves as an applied experiment of the three main themes in this thesis and the relations and interactions between them, as well as a testing tool with which to challenge in a practical way the theories and speculations formed in the thesis. My methodology is based on structuralism and post-structuralism in the fields of linguistics, psychology and anthropology, with particular application to the visual media and virtual reality. I am using a post-structuralist approach as it has been the most dominant discourse of replacing economic and social (power) relations with codes and the interplay between signifiers and signifieds. This, I find, is the most appropriate method for analysing both virtual systems and fashion, because, on an atomic level, they both depend on variables such as words and numbers. The code is therefore the common denominator of both disciplines. Furthermore, both disciplines use narrative for their proper function, video games for their back story and motivation of the player, and fashion for its advertising and promotion, as well as through archetypes and symbols. Fashion in this context works as a catalytic agent between post-structuralist codes in modern media as texts, and video games

DressCode

Concept & Context in Practice Exhibition, University for the Creative Arts Farnham (http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/galleries/exhibitions/2011/concept-context) This formalist enquiry concerns the implementation of structures that abstractly approximate real-world systems in computer games. It is an attempt to develop a methodological framework for computer game design based on a form of computer semiotics. I use the code of dress in social interaction as my semiotic system of choice for this case study, a system incredibly rich in semiotic content. To this end, I construct a game prototype named DressCode, whose main purpose is to explore dress as social performance within a computer game. The prime focus of the game is on visual performance, i.e. how the self is presented in social interaction. The bodies and attires of the characters contribute the signs communicated in this social performance, which is strategic and expressive. It involves the selective exchange of signs between the participants. The player elaborates and negotiates the character’s appearance within the game’s model of society. As such, DressCode is a simulation of an abstract semiotic system of fashion