Effective second-line treatment with cetuximab and bevacizumab in a patient with hepatic metastases of colorectal cancer and hyperbilirubinemia

Background: Irinotecan-based second-line chemotherapy of metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) is effective, it might, however, be contraindicated in cases of severe liver dysfunction due to advanced liver metastases. Case Report: A 57-year-old woman with diffuse CRC liver metastases showed progressive disease on first-line treatment with capecitabine and oxaliplatin (XELOX). Chronic cholestasis and hyperbilirubinemia caused by advanced liver involvement prohibited second-line treatment with irinotecan-based chemotherapy. We initiated combined antibody treatment with cetuximab and bevacizumab. Results: Clinical performance status as well as laboratory parameters improved rapidly. Staging investigations after 8 weeks revealed a partial remission. Since bilirubin levels had returned to the upper limit of normal, therapy could be changed to standard irinotecan, 5-fluorouracil, folinic acid, and bevacizumab. Conclusion: Combined treatment with cetuximab and bevacizumab may be considered as an effective treatment option in patients who cannot be treated with standard chemotherapy regimens due to impaired liver metabolism of cytotoxic substances

Polyhedral Surface Approximation of Non-Convex Voxel Sets and Improvements to the Convex Hull Computing Method

In this paper we introduce an algorithm for the creation of polyhedral approximations for objects represented as strongly connected sets of voxels in three-dimensional binary images. The algorithm generates the convex hull of a given object and modifies the hull afterwards by recursive repetitions of generating convex hulls of subsets of the given voxel set or subsets of the background voxels. The result of this method is a polyhedron which separates object voxels from background voxels. The objects processed by this algorithm and also the background voxel components inside the convex hull of the objects are restricted to have genus 0. The second aim of this paper is to present some improvements to our convex hull algorithm to reduce computation time

Albayzin-2010 audio segmentation evaluation: evaluation setup and results

In this paper, we present the audio segmentation task from the Albayzín-2010 evaluation, and the results obtained by the eight participants from Spanish and Portuguese universities. The evaluation task consisted of the segmentation of audio files from the Catalan 3/24 TV channel into 5 acoustic classes: music, speech, speech over music, speech over noise and other. The final results from all participants show that the problem of segmenting broadcast news is still challenging. We also present an analysis of the segmentation errors of the submitted systems. Additionally, the evaluation setup, including the database and the segmentation metric, is also described.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Polyedrisierung dreidimensionaler digitaler Objekte mit Mitteln der konvexen Hülle

Für die Visualisierung dreidimensionaler digitaler Objekte ist im Allgemeinen nur ihre Oberfläche von Interesse. Da von den bildgebenden Verfahren das gesamte räumliche Objekt in Form einer Volumenstruktur digitalisiert wird, muss aus den Daten die Oberfläche berechnet werden. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Algorithmus vorgestellt, der die Oberfläche dreidimensionaler digitaler Objekte, die als Menge von Voxeln gegeben sind, approximiert und dabei Polyeder erzeugt, die die Eigenschaft besitzen, die Voxel des Objektes von den Voxeln des Hintergrundes zu trennen. Weiterhin werden nicht-konvexe Objekte klassifiziert und es wird untersucht, für welche Klassen von Objekten die erzeugten Polyeder die minimale Flächenanzahl und den minimalen Oberflächeninhalt besitzen

Albayzin 2010 Evaluation campaign: speaker diarization

In this paper we present the evaluation results for the task of speaker diarization in broadcast news domain as part of the Albayzin 2010 evaluation campaign of language and speech technologies. The evaluation data was a subset of the Catalan broadcast news database recorded from the 3/24 TV channel. Six competing systems from five different universities were submitted for the Albayzin 2010: Speaker diarization session and the lowest diarization error rate obtained was 30.4%.Postprint (published version

Promises and pitfalls of deep neural networks in neuroimaging-based psychiatric research

By promising more accurate diagnostics and individual treatment recommendations, deep neural networks and in particular convolutional neural networks have advanced to a powerful tool in medical imaging. Here, we first give an introduction into methodological key concepts and resulting methodological promises including representation and transfer learning, as well as modelling domain-specific priors. After reviewing recent applications within neuroimaging-based psychiatric research, such as the diagnosis of psychiatric diseases, delineation of disease subtypes, normative modeling, and the development of neuroimaging biomarkers, we discuss current challenges. This includes for example the difficulty of training models on small, heterogeneous and biased data sets, the lack of validity of clinical labels, algorithmic bias, and the influence of confounding variables

Spitzer Observations of Young Red Quasars

We present mid-infrared spectra and photometry of 13 redshift 0.4 < z < 1 dust reddened quasars obtained with Spitzer IRS and MIPS. We compare properties derived from their infrared spectral energy distributions (intrinsic active galactic nucleus (AGN) luminosity and far-infrared luminosity from star formation) to the host luminosities and morphologies from Hubble Space Telescope imaging, and black hole masses estimated from optical and/or near-infrared spectroscopy. Our results are broadly consistent with models in which most dust reddened quasars are an intermediate phase between a merger-driven starburst triggering a completely obscured AGN, and a normal, unreddened quasar. We find that many of our objects have high accretion rates, close to the Eddington limit. These objects tend to fall below the black hole mass-bulge luminosity relation as defined by local galaxies, whereas most of our low accretion rate objects are slightly above the local relation, as typical for normal quasars at these redshifts. Our observations are therefore most readily interpreted in a scenario in which galaxy stellar mass growth occurs first by about a factor of three in each merger/starburst event, followed sometime later by black hole growth by a similar amount. We do not, however, see any direct evidence for quasar feedback affecting star formation in our objects, for example, in the form of a relationship between accretion rate and star formation. Five of our objects, however, do show evidence for outflows in the [O III]5007 Å emission line profile, suggesting that the quasar activity is driving thermal winds in at least some members of our sample

Ionization wave propagation on a micro cavity plasma array

Microcavity plasma arrays of inverse pyramidal cavities have been fabricated in p-Si wafers. Each cavity acts as a microscopic dielectric barrier discharge. Operated at atmospheric pressure in argon and excited with high voltage at about 10 kHz, each cavity develops a localized microplasma. Experiments have shown a strong interaction of individual cavities, leading to the propagation of wave-like optical emission structures along the surface of the array. This phenomenon is numerically investigated using computer simulation. The observed ionization wave propagates with a speed of about 5 km/s, which agrees well the experimental findings. It is found that the wave propagation is due to sequential contributions of a drift of electrons followed by drift of ions between cavities seeded by photoemission of electrons by the plasma in adjacent cavities