A virtualized software based on the NVIDIA cuFFT library for image denoising:performance analysis

Generic Virtualization Service (GVirtuS) is a new solution for enabling GPGPU on Virtual Machines or low powered devices. This paper focuses on the performance analysis that can be obtained using a GPGPU virtualized software. Recently, GVirtuS has been extended in order to support CUDA ancillary libraries with good results. Here, our aim is to analyze the applicability of this powerful tool to a real problem, which uses the NVIDIA cuFFT library. As case study we consider a simple denoising algorithm, implementing a virtualized GPU-parallel software based on the convolution theorem in order to perform the noise removal procedure in the frequency domain. We report some preliminary tests in both physical and virtualized environments to study and analyze the potential scalability of such an algorithm. Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs

Invasive Candida Infections in Patients With Haematological Malignancies and Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Recipients: Current Epidemiology and Therapeutic Options.

In the last decades, the global epidemiological impact of invasive candidiasis (IC) in patients with hematologic malignancies (HM) and in hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) recipients has decreased and the incidence of invasive aspergillosis exceeded that of Candida infections. The use of prevention strategies, first of all antifungal prophylaxis with triazoles, contributed to the reduction of IC in these populations as demonstrated by several epidemiological studies. However, relatively little is known about the current epidemiological patterns of IC in HM and HSCT populations, because recent epidemiological data almost exclusively derive from retrospective experiences and few prospective data are available. Several prospective, controlled studies in the prophylaxis of invasive fungal diseases have been conducted in both the HM and HSCT setting. On the contrary, most of the prospective controlled trials that demonstrated the efficacy of the antifungal drugs echinocandins and voriconazole in the treatment of candidemia and invasive candidiasis mainly involved patients with underlying conditions other than HM or HSCT. For these reasons, international guidelines provided specific indications for the prophylaxis strategies in HM and HSCT patients, whereas the recommendations on therapy of documented Candida infections are based on the results observed in the general population and should be considered with caution

Low Incidence Rate of Opportunistic and Viral Infections During Imatinib Treatment in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Patients in Early and Late Chronic Phase.

<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB">Background: Imatinib has become first line therapy in chronic myeloid leukemia patients. Little is known about the infective consequences during the treatment with this drug in large series of chronic phase patients. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB">Material and methods: From January 2001 to September 2006 we treated with imatinib 250 patients in first line (early CP) or after interferon failure (late CP), out of clinical trials and recorded all the bacterial and viral infections occurred.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB">Results: We recorded a similar incidence of bacterial and viral infections both in first line and late CP patients (respectively, 16% and 13%) during 3.5 years of follow-up. Analysis of presenting features predisposing to infections revealed differences only in late CP patients, with elevated percentage of high Sokal risk patients and a more longer median time from diagnosis to start of imatinib.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB">Conclusions: Opportunistic infections and reactivation of Herpes Zoster are observed during imatinib therapy at very low incidence.</span></p> <!--EndFragment--&gt

Watch Out: Embedded Video Tracking with BST for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The paper presents the development of a real time tracking system, named Watch Out, that is able to efficiently run on an Nvidia Jetson board mounted on a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). The approach to long term video tracking implemented in Watch Out is named Best Structured Tracker (BST): a set of local trackers independently tracks patches of the original target in an online learning manner, while an outlier detection procedure filters out the less meaningful ones, and a resampling procedure allows to correctly reinitialise the trackers that have been filtered out. Performance of the tracking algorithm has been verified both on VOT2016 challenge datasets and in real situations using an Nvidia Jetson board mounted on a drone. Results show that the proposed system can track almost every possible target in real time

WhoAreYou (WAY): A Mobile CUDA Powered Picture ID Card Recognition System

The paper reports a novel cloud based approach for image matching between high-resolution images of faces and low resolution images of ID Cards. We design our application matching the mobile cloud computing design guidelines with the use of CUDA kernel invocation from regular mobile devices (devices that naively donât support CUDA GPGPUs) as a novel contribution. Face matching is performed by the OpenFace deep neural network, which evaluates pre-processed images in cloud, whilst pre-processing is done on mobile device. To test our system, we built an image dataset of 30 subject caputeres in 10 different poses, denoised to reduce any traces of stamps or watermark on the ID cards, mixed to the well known ORL and LFW datasets

Safety and efficacy of nilotinib in chronic phase chronic myeloid leukemia in a patient with Wolf-Parkinson-White disease and hematological resistance after suboptimal response to imatinib at six months

[No abstract available

Refractory cytopenia with unilineage dysplasia: analysis of prognostic factors and survival in 126 patients

According to the revised WHO classification of 2008, dysplasia in >= 10% of one bone marrow lineage and one cytopenia constitutes the low-risk category of unilineage cytopenia and unilineage dysplasia (UCUD). We retrospectively reclassified, according to WHO, low-risk MDS from our database and found 126 subjects with these features at diagnosis: 79 patients were categorized as refractory anemia (RA), 23 patients as refractory neutropenia (RN), and 24 as refractory thrombocytopenia (RT). We did not find differences between the three subgroups as regards sex, median age, and cytogenetic aberrations. Lower PMN count (0.8 x 10<SU9</SU/L) was observed in the RN category, as well as lower platelet count in the RT category (51 x 10<SU9</SU/L). Moreover, we found a lower rate of patients requiring RBC transfusions, during the disease course, in the RT category (45.8%) as compared to RA (62%) and RN (69%) groups (p = 0.05); a lower incidence of infections at diagnosis in the RT category (20.8%) compared to RA (32%) and RN (43%) categories (p = 0.03); and a higher incidence of hemorrhagic symptoms at diagnosis in the RT category (41.6%) and RN category (26%) as compared to the RA group (5%) (p = 0.001). Application of different scoring systems (Bournemouth and Spanish scores, WPSS) revealed a low OS in high-risk patients within the RT category, compared to RA and RN categories, although unlikely to reflect the consequences of low OS found in the former category. Statistically significant differences were also evidenced in the incidence of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) evolution and overall survival: 7/79 (8%) patients with the RA category evolved to AML in a median time of 89 months, whereas 4/23 (17%) of the RN category and 1/24 (4%) of the RT category experienced disease progression, in a median time of 33.8 and 12.8 months, respectively (p = 0.03). The RT category had a lower overall survival (15.9 months) as compared to RA (48.2 months) and RN (35.9 months) categories (p < 0.001). In conclusion, in our study, application of the revised 2008 WHO classification confirmed the importance of separating patients with unilineage dysplasia for prognostic disease assessment; from our results it seems that the RT category has a worse outcome.</

Bronchioloalveolar carcinoma: an analysis of survival predictors

Macroscopic and microscopic features of tumours have been analysed in 37 bronchiolo-alveolar carcinomas. Lymphocytes, Langerhans cells, collagen (mature and/or myofibroblastic), were quantitatively or semiquantitatively evaluated. Histology, stage, type of fibrosis, nuclear profile features (area and shape factors), amount and type of mucin secreted, number of mitoses, Langerhans cells, myofibroblasts and LeuM1+ cells were not related to survival. Gross morphology of the tumour and, to a lesser extent, lymphoid infiltrates (in particular UCHL1+ and L26+ peritumoral lymphoid cells) were the only variables significantly related to survival. Estimated survival functions were computed according to Cox's model: well demarcated tumours behaved significantly better than poorly demarcated tumours and even more so than diffuse or multiple mass. Lymphoid infiltrates were significantly more represented in and around well demarcated tumours: however, their survival predicting value was less than that of the gross type

Evaluation of comorbidities at diagnosis predicts outcome in myelodysplastic syndrome patients

Recent data suggest that proper assessment of comorbidities is useful to predict the outcome of MDS patients receiving allogeneic stem cell transplantation. However, the results obtained in this highly selected subset of patients cannot be applied to the whole MDS population. We evaluated the impact of comorbidities in 418 consecutive MDS patients diagnosed at our institute from 1992 to 2005. All patients were classified according to WHO criteria and all received only conservative and supportive treatment. One or more comorbidities were detected in 390 patients (93%) at the time of diagnosis, with a higher incidence in older patients. Cardiac diseases were the most frequent comorbidities (30%) while diabetes and correlated adverse events were the second cause of comorbidity (20%). We applied 3 comorbidity prognostic scores (CCI, HCT-CI and a MDS-CI score proposed by Della Porta et al.). According to CCI score, 253 patients had a score 0, 111 patients had a score 1 and 54 patients had a score >2. According to HCT-CI, 209 patients had a score 0, 105 patients had a score 1 and 106 patients had a score >2. With MDS-CI score, 288 patients had a score 0 and 129 patients had a score >1. We found a significant correlation between survival and stratification according to CCI and MDS-CI scores (p = 0.01 and 0.02, respectively), but not according to HCT-CI score. The number of comorbidities as evaluated according to CCI was directly correlated to the development of RBC transfusion-dependency and was associated to a significantly higher risk of death not related to leukemic evolution (HR = 2.12, p <= 0.001). Conversely, higher risk of non-leukemic death did not correlate with higher transfusional requirement according to HCT-CI and MDS-CI scores (p = 0.3 and 0.43, respectively). As suggested by Della Porta et al., also in our experience the presence of cardiac, liver, renal, pulmonary diseases and solid tumours was found to independently affect the risk of death in a multivariable Cox regression analysis (p values from <0.01 to 0.004). In conclusion, assessment of comorbidities at diagnosis in MDS patients may improve the ability of therapeutic decisions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Using GPGPU accelerated interpolation algorithms for marine bathymetry processing with on-premises and cloud based computational resources

Data crowdsourcing is one of most remarkable results of pervasive and internet connected low-power devices making diverse and different â\u80\u9cthingsâ\u80\u9d as a world wide distributed system. This paper is focused on a vertical application of GPGPU virtualization software exploitation targeted on high performance geographical data interpolation. We present an innovative implementation of the Inverse Distance Weight (IDW) interpolation algorithm leveraging on CUDA GPGPUs. We perform tests in both physical and virtualized environments in order to demonstrate the potential scalability in production. We present an use case related to high resolution bathymetry interpolation in a crowdsource data context