Investigation of Dose Minimisation Protocol for 18F-FDG PET-CT in the Management of Lymphoma Postchemotherapy Followup

Introduction. 18F-FDG-PET-CT plays an important role in the management of lymphoma postchemotherapy followup. Some centres perform prechemotherapy baseline CT and postchemotherapy PETCT. With a concern of radiation burden, especially in young patients, this study aimed to assess if PETCT radiation dose could be reduced. Methods. Retrospective analysis of 100 lymphoma patients was performed to record sites of disease on prechemotherapy CT and postchemotherapy PETCT. The potential reduction in radiation and time achieved with PETCT limited to sites of known disease identified on prechemotherapy CT was calculated. Results. No FDG-uptake was seen in 72 cases. FDG uptake at known disease sites was seen in 24. Of the remaining 4, one had clinically significant pathology, a rectal adenocarcinoma. PETCT did not reveal any unexpected sites of lymphoma. Limiting PETCT to sites of known disease would have saved a mean radiation dose of 4 mSv (27.3%), with a mean time of 16 minutes. Conclusion. Our study suggests that young patients may benefit from reduced radiation by limiting PETCT to sites of known disease with low risk of missing significant pathology. However, in older patients, with increased incidence of asymptomatic synchronous malignancies, whole-body PETCT is advisable unless prechemotherapy PETCT has been performed

Positron emission tomography PET/CT harmonisation study of different clinical PET/CT scanners using commercially available software

Objectives: Harmonisation is the process whereby standardised uptake values from different scanners can be made comparable. This PET/CT pilot study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of harmonisation of a modern scanner with image reconstruction incorporating resolution recovery (RR) with another vendor older scanner operated in two-dimensional (2D) mode, and for both against a European standard (EARL). The vendor-proprietary software EQ•PET was used, which achieves harmonisation with a Gaussian smoothing. A substudy investigated effect of RR on harmonisation. Methods: Phantom studies on each scanner were performed to optimise the smoothing parameters required to achieve successful harmonisation. 80 patients were retrospectively selected; half were imaged on each scanner. As proof of principle, a cohort of 10 patients was selected from the modern scanner subjects to study the effects of RR on harmonisation. Results: Before harmonisation, the modern scanner without RR adhered to EARL specification. Using the phantom data, filters were derived for optimal harmonisation between scanners and with and without RR as applicable, to the EARL standard. The 80-patient cohort did not reveal any statistically significant differences. In the 10-patient cohort SUVmax for RR > no RR irrespective of harmonisation but differences lacked statistical significance (one-way ANOVA F(3.36) = 0.37, p = 0.78). Bland-Altman analysis showed that harmonisation reduced the SUVmax ratio between RR and no RR to 1.07 (95% CI 0.96–1.18) with no outliers. Conclusions: EQ•PET successfully enabled harmonisation between modern and older scanners and against the EARL standard. Harmonisation reduces SUVmax and dependence on the use of RR in the modern scanner. Advances in knowledge: EQ•PET is feasible to harmonise different PET/CT scanners and reduces the effect of RR on SUVmax

Properdin: A Novel Target for Neuroprotection in Neonatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Injury

Background: Hypoxic-ischemic (HI) encephalopathy is a major cause of neonatal mortality and morbidity, with a global incidence of 3 per 1,000 live births. Intrauterine or perinatal complications, including maternal infection, constitute a major risk for the development of neonatal HI brain damage. During HI, inflammatory response and oxidative stress occur, causing subsequent cell death. The presence of an infection sensitizes the neonatal brain, making it more vulnerable to the HI damage. Currently, therapeutic hypothermia is the only clinically approved treatment available for HI encephalopathy, however it is only partially effective in HI alone and its application in infection-sensitized HI is debatable. Therefore, there is an unmet clinical need for the development of novel therapeutic interventions for the treatment of HI. Such an alternative is targeting the complement system. Properdin, which is involved in stabilization of the alternative pathway convertases, is the only known positive regulator of alternative complement activation. Absence of the classical pathway in the neonatal HI brain is neuroprotective. However, there is a paucity of data on the participation of the alternative pathway and in particular the role of properdin in HI brain damage. / Objectives: Our study aimed to validate the effect of global properdin deletion in two mouse models: HI alone and LPS-sensitized HI, thus addressing two different clinical scenarios. / Results: Our results indicate that global properdin deletion in a Rice-Vannucci model of neonatal HI and LPS-sensitized HI brain damage, in the short term, clearly reduced forebrain cell death and microglial activation, as well as tissue loss. In HI alone, deletion of properdin reduced TUNEL+ cell death and microglial post-HI response at 48 h post insult. Under the conditions of LPS-sensitized HI, properdin deletion diminished TUNEL+ cell death, tissue loss and microglial activation at 48 h post-HI. / Conclusion: Overall, our data suggests a critical role for properdin, and possibly also a contribution in neonatal HI alone and in infection-sensitized HI brain damage. Thus, properdin can be considered a novel target for treatment of neonatal HI brain damage

The Indian family on UK reality television: Convivial culture in salient contexts

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below, copyright 2012 @ the author.This article demonstrates how The Family (2009), a fly-on-the wall UK reality series about a British Indian family, facilitates both current public service broadcasting requirements and mass audience appeal. From a critical cultural studies perspective, the author examines the journalistic and viewer responses to the series where authenticity, universality, and comedy emerge as major themes. Textual analysis of the racialized screen representations also helps locate the series within the contexts of contested multiculturalism, genre developments in reality television and public service broadcasting. Paul Gilroy’s concept of convivial culture is used as a frame in understanding how meanings of the series are produced within a South Asian popular representational space. The author suggests that the social comedy taxonomy is a prerequisite for the making of this particular observational documentary. Further, the popular (comedic) mode of conviviality on which the series depends is both expedient and necessary within the various sociopolitical contexts outlined

Data for 'Something in the way she moves': the functional significance of flexibility in the multiple roles of protein disulfide isomerase (PDI)

Protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) has diverse functions in the endoplasmic reticulum as catalyst of redox transfer, disulfide isomerization and oxidative protein folding, as molecular chaperone and in multi-subunit complexes. It interacts with an extraordinarily wide range of substrate and partner proteins, but there is only limited structural information on these interactions. Extensive evidence on the flexibility of PDI in solution is not matched by any detailed picture of the scope of its motion. A new rapid method for simulating the motion of large proteins provides detailed molecular trajectories for PDI demonstrating extensive changes in the relative orientation of its four domains, great variation in the distances between key sites and internal motion within the core ligand-binding domain. The review shows that these simulations are consistent with experimental evidence and provide insight into the functional capabilities conferred by the extensive flexible motion of PDI

Marine turtle harvest in a mixed small-scale fishery: Evidence for revised management measures

Copyright © 2013 Elsevier. NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Ocean and Coastal Management. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Ocean and Coastal Management, 2013, Vol. 82, pp. 34 – 42 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2013.05.004Small-scale fisheries (SSF) account for around half of the world's marine and inland fisheries, but their impact on the marine environment is usually under-estimated owing to difficulties in monitoring and regulation. Successful management of mixed SSF requires holistic approaches that sustainably exploit target species, consider non-target species and maintain fisher livelihoods. For two years, we studied the marine turtle fishery in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) in the Wider Caribbean Region, where the main export fisheries are queen conch (Strombus gigas) and the spiny lobster (Panulirus argus); with fin-fish, green turtles (Chelonia mydas) and hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) taken for domestic consumption. We evaluate the turtle harvest in relation to the other fisheries and recommend legislation and management alternatives. We demonstrate the connectivity between multi-species fisheries and artisanal turtle capture: with increasing lobster catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE), hawksbill catch increased whilst green turtle catch decreased. With increasing conch CPUE, hawksbill catch declined and there was no demonstrable effect on green turtle catch. We estimate 176–324 green and 114–277 hawksbill turtles are harvested annually in TCI: the largest documented legal hawksbill fishery in the western Atlantic. Of particular concern is the capture of adult turtles. Current legislation focuses take on larger individuals that are key to population maintenance. Considering these data we recommend the introduction of maximum size limits for both species and a closed season on hawksbill take during the lobster fishing season. Our results highlight the need to manage turtles as part of a broader approach to SSF management

An Accurate Ensemble Classifier for Medical Volume Analysis: Phantom and Clinical PET Study.

The predominant application of positron emission tomography (PET) in the field of oncology and radiotherapy and the significance of medical imaging research have led to an urgent need for effective approaches to PET volume analysis and the development of accurate and robust volume analysis techniques to support oncologists in their clinical practice, including diagnosis, arrangement of appropriate radiotherapy treatment, and evaluation of patients’ response to therapy. This paper proposes an efficient optimized ensemble classifier to tackle the problem of analysis of squamous cell carcinoma in patient PET volumes. This optimized classifier is based on an artificial neural network (ANN), fuzzy C-means (FCM), an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), K-means, and a self-organizing map (SOM). Four ensemble classifier machines are proposed in this study. The first three are built using a voting approach, an averaging technique, and weighted averaging, respectively. The fourth, novel ensemble classifier machine is based on the combination of a modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach and weighted averaging. Experimental National Electrical Manufacturers Association and International Electrotechnical Commission (NEMA IEC) body phantom and clinical PET studies of participants with laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma are used for the evaluation of the proposed approach. Superior results were achieved using the new optimized ensemble classifier when compared with the results from the investigated classifiers and the non-optimized ensemble classifiers. The proposed approach identified the region of interest class (tumor) with an average accuracy of 98.11% in clinical datasets of patients with laryngeal tumors. This system supports the expertise of clinicians in PET tumor analysis.King Abdulaziz Universit