Anal-fissure - Correlation Between Symptoms and Manometry Before and After Surgery

The study compared symptoms and manometric results in 76 patients (42 men and 34 women; median age: 45 years) before and at long-term follow-up (median time: 54 months) after fissurectomy with posterior midline sphincterotomy for anal fissure. The fissure healed in all cases. Sporadic loss of continence for flatus or for liquid stool occurred in 21 patients (27.6%) and soiling was present in 7 other patients (9.2 %). Preoperative maximum resting anal pressure was significantly greater in the study group compared with 40 control subjects (p < 0.001). Postoperative resting anal pressure fell significantly (p < 0.001) and remained low on long-term assessment. Postoperative maximal squeeze pressure remained unchanged. No correlation could be found between preoperative and postoperative clinical symptoms (including continence) and anorectal manometry

On the construction of interval-valued fuzzy morphological operators

Classical fuzzy mathematical morphology is one of the extensions of original binary morphology to greyscale morphology. Recently, this theory was further extended to interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology by allowing uncertainty in the grey values of the image and the structuring element. In this paper, we investigate the construction of increasing interval-valued fuzzy operators from their binary counterparts and work this out in more detail for the morphological operators, which results in a nice theoretical link between binary and interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology. The investigation is done both in the general continuous and the practical discrete case. It will be seen that the characterization of the supremum in the discrete case leads to stronger relationships than in the continuous case. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.17818410

Chronic idiopathic constipation with outlet obstruction.

Defecatory difficulties may be a source of great distress to patients. Normal defecation requires the coordination of abdominal and pelvic muscles. Throughout the last decade, many studies have demonstrated various and often mixed abnormalities of these mechanisms. Pathophysiological studies are able to determine, in a specific patient, the most probable causes of the obstructive symptom. Progress in the management of such disorders can only be achieved by understanding their pathophysiology

On the Decomposition of Interval-Valued Fuzzy Morphological Operators

Interval-valued fuzzy mathematical morphology is an extension of classical fuzzy mathematical morphology, which is in turn one of the extensions of binary morphology to greyscale morphology. The uncertainty that may exist concerning the grey value of a pixel due to technical limitations or bad recording circumstances, is taken into account by mapping the pixels in the image domain onto an interval to which the pixel's grey value is expected to belong instead of one specific value. Such image representation corresponds to the representation of an interval-valued fuzzy set and thus techniques from interval-valued fuzzy set theory can be applied to extend greyscale mathematical morphology. In this paper, we study the decomposition of the interval-valued fuzzy morphological operators. We investigate in which cases the [alpha (1),alpha (2)]-cuts of these operators can be written or approximated in terms of the corresponding binary operators. Such conversion into binary operators results in a reduction of the computation time and is further also theoretically interesting since it provides us a link between interval-valued fuzzy and binary morphology.36327029

Interval-Valued and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Mathematical Morphologies as Special Cases of L-Fuzzy Mathematical Morphology

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Mathematical morphology (MM) offers a wide range of tools for image processing and computer vision. MM was originally conceived for the processing of binary images and later extended to gray-scale morphology. Extensions of classical binary morphology to gray-scale morphology include approaches based on fuzzy set theory that give rise to fuzzy mathematical morphology (FMM). From a mathematical point of view, FMM relies on the fact that the class of all fuzzy sets over a certain universe forms a complete lattice. Recall that complete lattices provide for the most general framework in which MM can be conducted. The concept of L-fuzzy set generalizes not only the concept of fuzzy set but also the concepts of interval-valued fuzzy set and Atanassov's intuitionistic fuzzy set. In addition, the class of L-fuzzy sets forms a complete lattice whenever the underlying set L constitutes a complete lattice. Based on these observations, we develop a general approach towards L-fuzzy mathematical morphology in this paper. Our focus is in particular on the construction of connectives for interval-valued and intuitionistic fuzzy mathematical morphologies that arise as special, isomorphic cases of L-fuzzy MM. As an application of these ideas, we generate a combination of some well-known medical image reconstruction techniques in terms of interval-valued fuzzy image processing.4315071Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)CNPq [309608/2009-0]FAPESP [2009/16284-2

Thrombosis of splenic artery pseudoaneurysm complicating pancreatitis.

The natural history of pseudoaneurysms complicating pancreatitis is unknown. A patient with chronic pancreatitis is described in whom thrombosis of a splenic artery pseudoaneurysm occurred. Early diagnosis and radical treatment of a bleeding pseudoaneurysm are mandatory. When elective treatment is considered, however, contrast enhanced computed tomography may be useful just before surgery as thrombosis may occur