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Background Skeletal muscle depletion (sarcopenia) is associated with poor prognosis in patients with lung cancer. We analyzed changes in skeletal muscle area using serial computed tomography (CT) until the death of patients with advanced squamous cell lung cancer (SQCLC). Methods This retrospective study comprised 70 consecutive patients who underwent palliative chemotherapy for SQCLC. The cross‐sectional area of the skeletal muscle at the level of the first lumbar vertebra (L1) was measured using chest CT. An artificial intelligence algorithm was developed and used for the serial assessment of the muscle area. Sarcopenia was defined as an L1 skeletal muscle index 3.24 cm2/month) had shorter overall survival than patients losing skeletal muscle slowly (median, 5.7 vs. 12.0 months, p, Patients with advanced SQCLC lose a significant amount of skeletal muscle until death. The rate of muscle area reduction is faster at the end of life.

Watershed transformation is an effective segmentation algorithm that originates from the mathematical morphology field. This algorithm is widely used in medical image segmentation because it produces complete division even under poor contrast. However, over-segmentation is its most significant limitation. Therefore, this article proposes a combination of watershed transformation and the expectation-maximization EM algorithm to segment MR brain images efficiently. The EM algorithm is used to form clusters. Then, the brightest cluster is considered and converted into a binary image. A Sobel operator applied on the binary image generates the initial gradient image. Morphological reconstruction is applied to find the foreground and background markers. The final gradient image is obtained using the minima imposition technique on the initial gradient magnitude along with markers. In addition, watershed segmentation applied on the final gradient magnitude generates effective gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid segmentation. The results are compared with simple marker controlled watershed segmentation, watershed segmentation combined with Otsu multilevel thresholding, and local binary fitting energy model for validation. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 26, 225-232, 2016

Introduction: Laparoscopic surgery has been increasing in popularity in recent years. In 2004, the Japan Society for Endoscopic Surgery developed its Endoscopic Surgical Skill Qualification System (ESSQS) to assess surgeons. Methods: To earn the ESSQS accreditation, applicants must submit an unedited operative video in which they perform either a distal gastrectomy or pyloruspreserving gastrectomy with lymph node dissection for gastric cancer. The videos are assessed by two separate judges based on detailed criteria for common and procedure-specific technical-grade slips. Common criteria from all fields of gastrointestinal and general surgery are used to evaluate the basic laparoscopic surgical skills and autonomy of the operator. The target organ determines the procedure-specific criteria are set to assess whether or not adequate oncological clearance has been achieved. Results: Between 2004 and 2009, 154 (44.6%) out of 345 applicant surgeons assessed under the ESSQS for gastric surgery have been accredited. Interrater agreement was acceptable and ranged between 0.21 and 0.59. Conclusion: The ESSQS system may facilitate improvement in surgical technique and the standardization of laparoscopic surgery in Japan.

Background Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have a higher risk of developing postoperative pulmonary complications. Laparoscopic gastrectomy (LG) is accepted as a standard treatment for early gastric cancer. We sought to compare the clinical presentation and complications associated with LG and open gastrectomy (OG) to define the role of LG in the treatment of patients with gastric cancer and COPD. Methods This was a retrospective cohort study of patients with gastric cancer and COPD who underwent gastrectomy from January 2005 to December 2007. Patients were divided into LG group and OG group according to the treatment guidelines. The stage of COPD was determined by the FEV1 ratio. Results There were 104 patients enrolled in this study. No significant differences were observed in preoperative pulmonary function between the two groups, and most patients (99/104, 95%) were in COPD stages I and II. The changes in end-tidal CO2 (P = 0.012) and PaCO2 (P

A new composite material based on directly deposited microcrystalline Si (μc-Si) was developed, tested and applied as active layer in top-gate coplanar p-type TFTs. The obtained TFT's characteristics demonstrate high quality of developed μc-Si and possibility of using it in TFT backplanes for AMOLED displays.