MDNet: A Semantically and Visually Interpretable Medical Image Diagnosis Network

The inability to interpret the model prediction in semantically and visually meaningful ways is a well-known shortcoming of most existing computer-aided diagnosis methods. In this paper, we propose MDNet to establish a direct multimodal mapping between medical images and diagnostic reports that can read images, generate diagnostic reports, retrieve images by symptom descriptions, and visualize attention, to provide justifications of the network diagnosis process. MDNet includes an image model and a language model. The image model is proposed to enhance multi-scale feature ensembles and utilization efficiency. The language model, integrated with our improved attention mechanism, aims to read and explore discriminative image feature descriptions from reports to learn a direct mapping from sentence words to image pixels. The overall network is trained end-to-end by using our developed optimization strategy. Based on a pathology bladder cancer images and its diagnostic reports (BCIDR) dataset, we conduct sufficient experiments to demonstrate that MDNet outperforms comparative baselines. The proposed image model obtains state-of-the-art performance on two CIFAR datasets as well.Comment: CVPR2017 Ora

The Impact of Simulation on Graduate Entry Master's Students' Confidence to Provide Safe Patient Care: A Longitudinal Study

Background: Simulation-based education is a valuable learning approach for nursing students, yet there is limited focus or reports on graduate entry master's programs. This study explores the effect of simulation on graduate entry master's students' confidence to provide safe patient care. Methods: This study includes a longitudinal, single-site, cohort design that uses the Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey to measure nursing students’ (n = 32) confidence before and after simulation and after clinical practice. Results: Overall confidence increased after simulation but was not always sustained after clinical practice. Conclusions: Simulation-based education can build students’ patient safety confidence; however, the dynamic nature of the clinical setting challenges student confidence

The fallibility of memory in judicial processes: Lessons from the past and their modern consequences

The capability of adult and child witnesses to accurately recollect events from the past and provide reliable testimony has been hotly debated for more than one hundred years (Binet, 1900). Prominent legal cases of the 1980s and 1990s sparked lengthy debates and important research questions surrounding the fallibility and general reliability of memory. But what lessons have we learned, some forty years later, about the role of memory in the judicial system? In this review, we focus on what we now know about the consequences of the fallibility of memory for legal proceedings. We present a brief historical overview of false memories that focuses on three critical forensic areas that changed memory research: Children as eyewitnesses, historic sexual abuse, and eyewitness (mis)identification. We revisit some of the prominent trials of the 1980s and 1990s to not only consider the role false memories have played, but also to see how this has helped us understand memory today. Finally, we consider the way in which the research on memory (true and false) has been successfully integrated into some courtroom procedures

Simulated rock profiles for surface weathering estimation

The estimation of rock surface weathering, much like the estimation of shear strength of rock joints, is facilitated by the use of statistical methods on linear profiles. Unfortunately, a number of factors ranging from the size of the sampling interval used to the mathematics of the roughness index chosen can misrepresent the true roughness of a surface. A method is proposed to simulate rock profiles using a combination of generated signals and a Markov process for the purpose of studying and anticipating the effects of many variables on roughness estimates. The large-scale properties of rock are represented as sine waves, sawtooth waves, and a random Markov process and the small-scale properties are simulated with red noise. The generative parameters are varied to produce a corpus of simulated profiles, where sampling and measurement error is also simulated by lightly deflecting measurements with Gaussian-distributed noise. Using the simulated profiles, five different measures for roughness are compared and the results indicate that no one measure alone exhibits sensitivity to all generative parameters. The Fourier transform is applied to compare the frequency content of these simulated profiles to that of real limestone rock, providing some validation that the conclusions drawn from our simulated profiles also extend to profiles from real rock samples

The Impact of Simulation on Graduate Entry Master's Students' Confidence to Provide Safe Patient Care: A Longitudinal Study

© 2019 International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning Background: Simulation-based education is a valuable learning approach for nursing students, yet there is limited focus or reports on graduate entry master's programs. This study explores the effect of simulation on graduate entry master's students' confidence to provide safe patient care. Methods: This study includes a longitudinal, single-site, cohort design that uses the Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey to measure nursing students’ (n = 32) confidence before and after simulation and after clinical practice. Results: Overall confidence increased after simulation but was not always sustained after clinical practice. Conclusions: Simulation-based education can build students’ patient safety confidence; however, the dynamic nature of the clinical setting challenges student confidence

Anti-a actinin antibodies as new predictors of response to treatment in autoimmune hepatitis type 1

Background We reported that combined presence of autoantibodies (Abs) against filamentous-actin (AFA) and a-actinin are specific for autoimmune hepatitis type 1 (AIH-1) diagnosis. Aim To explore our data and assess whether anti-a-actinin and AFA Abs could be used as indicators of response to treatment and predictors of AIH-1 flares in a large cohort of AIH-1 patients. Methods Seven hundred and sixty-four serial serum samples of 86 consecutive AIH-1 patients, 509 pathological and 110 normal controls were tested for the presence of anti-a-actinin and AFA Abs by an in-house IgG-specific ELISA and a standardised commercially available ELISA respectively. Patients sera were divided into baseline group (active disease before treatment initiation, n = 86) and then according to treatment response into group A-responders (n = 40 patients), group B-relapsers/incomplete responders (n = 37 patients) and group C-not-treated (n = 9 patients). Results Anti-a-actinin and AFA levels were significantly higher at baseline. Double reactivity against a-actinin and AFA was associated with disease activity (OR 4.9; 95% CI: 2.79). Anti-a-actinin optical densities (ODs) before treatment decreased significantly at first remission (P < 0.05). Treatment response was associated with anti-a-actinin Abs negativity before treatment (OR 3.4; 95% CI: 1.38.9) and absence of double positivity for anti-a-actinin and AFA Abs before treatment (OR 3.8; 95% CI: 1.410.4). Responders had lower baseline levels of anti-a-actinin than relapsers and/or incomplete responders (P = 0.002). Binary logistic regression revealed lower levels of anti-a-actinin as the only independent predictors of response (P = 0.05). Conclusions Anti-a-actinin Abs at baseline appear to predict treatment response and therefore they might be used for monitoring treatment outcome in AIH-1

Thigh-length compression stockings and DVT after stroke

Controversy exists as to whether neoadjuvant chemotherapy improves survival in patients with invasive bladder cancer, despite randomised controlled trials of more than 3000 patients. We undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the effect of such treatment on survival in patients with this disease