Content-Based Hyperspectral Image Compression Using a Multi-Depth Weighted Map With Dynamic Receptive Field Convolution

In content-based image compression, the importance map guides the bit allocation based on its ability to represent the importance of image contents. In this paper, we improve the representational power of importance map using Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) block, and propose multi-depth structure to reconstruct non-important channel information at low bit rates. Furthermore, Dynamic Receptive Field convolution (DRFc) is introduced to improve the ability of normal convolution to extract edge information, so as to increase the weight of edge content in the importance map and improve the reconstruction quality of edge regions. Results indicate that our proposed method can extract an importance map with clear edges and fewer artifacts so as to provide obvious advantages for bit rate allocation in content-based image compression. Compared with typical compression methods, our proposed method can greatly improve the performance of Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM) and spectral angle (SAM) on three public datasets, and can produce a much better visual result with sharp edges and fewer artifacts. As a result, our proposed method reduces the SAM by 42.8% compared to the recently SOTA method to achieve the same low bpp (0.25) on the KAIST dataset

Level of IGF1 in follicular fluid associated with IVF pregnancy outcome in the application of growth hormone

Objectives: The combination of growth hormone (GH) with gonadotropin was a prevalent method to improve clinical reproduction in adjuvant for assisted reproduction treatment (ART). However, the contradictory results from previous studies failed to confirm the benefits. The present study is focused on the mechanism analysis of GH-IGF1-gonadal axis in ART and the changes of IGF1 in follicular fluid among different types of patients. Material and methods: We recruited 136 patients and divided them into eight groups according to their ages and ovarian reserves. The baseline characteristics of the study population were summarized. The therapeutic outcomes in the study population were observed. In the meantime, concentrations of IGF1 in follicular fluids from different types of patients who underwent GH strategy were measured by Western blot. The functional mechanism of GH-IGF1-gonadal axis in ART was also analyzed. Results: We analyzed the baseline characteristics of the study population, the therapeutic outcome of GH-IGF-1-gonadal axis, as well as the relative protein level of IGF1 and IGFBP1 in follicular fluid from different groups. The chemical pregnancy rate was significantly increased in different degrees for groups with GH co-treatment compared to groups without GH co-treatment. The IGF1 in follicular fluid of patients under 35 years’ old showed an upward trend compared with groups of poor, normal and high ovarian reserves. After GH induction, IGF1 in follicular fluid was significantly increased in patients over 35 years old. Conclusions: The study suggested that the application of GH might be beneficial to the pregnancy outcome in patients. GH application in patients older than 35 years might have a beneficial effect on pregnancy outcome via promoting the expression of IGF1. Our study indicates a different mechanism from GH application among younger and older patient in ART and provides a new clue for individual clinical treatment in infernity patients

Decreased Function of Delayed Recall in Non-demented Elderly Subjects With Apolipoprotein E ε4 Allele

Apolipoprotein E (APOE) is the major genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Inconsistent results about the role of APOE ε4 alleles on cognitive decline of community non-dementia elderly have been reported. This study aimed to examine the relationship between APOE ε4 allele and cognitive abilities in the subjects aged 60 years or above from a community in Shanghai, China. A total of 1445 participants voluntarily accepted the analysis of APOE genotype and global cognitive assay using the Mini Mental Status Evaluation (MMSE). There were no significant differences in total MMSE scores between APOE ε4 carriers and non-carriers. In addition, the performances of orientation, registration, attention, calculation, and language had no significant differences between subjects with and without APOE ε4 allele. However, stratified analysis showed that the performance of delayed recall in subjects with APOE ε4 allele was inferior to that in non-ε4 carriers (p = 0.041). Further, the multiple linear regression analysis showed the significant correlations between the presence of APOE ε4 allele and the scores of the delayed memory subdomain if age, gender, and education were adjusted but no significant correlations if the related factors were not adjusted. The results indicate that significant impact of APOE ε4 allele only on the delay memory but not on global or other sub-domains of cognitive abilities