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Laser scanning is used in advanced biological microscopy to deliver superior imaging contrast, resolution and sensitivity. However, it is challenging to scale up the scanning speed required for interrogating a large and heterogeneous population of biological specimens or capturing highly dynamic biological processes at high spatiotemporal resolution. Bypassing the speed limitation of traditional mechanical methods, free-space angular-chirp-enhanced delay (FACED) is an all-optical, passive and reconfigurable laser-scanning approach that has been successfully applied in different microscopy modalities at an ultrafast line-scan rate of 1-80 MHz. Optimal FACED imaging performance requires optimized experimental design and implementation to enable specific high-speed applications. In this protocol, we aim to disseminate information allowing FACED to be applied to a broader range of imaging modalities. We provide (i) a comprehensive guide and design specifications for the FACED hardware; (ii) step-by-step optical implementations of the FACED module including the key custom components; and (iii) the overall image acquisition and reconstruction pipeline. We illustrate two practical imaging configurations: multimodal FACED imaging flow cytometry (bright-field, fluorescence and second-harmonic generation) and kHz 2D two-photon fluorescence microscopy. Users with basic experience in optical microscope operation and software engineering should be able to complete the setup of the FACED imaging hardware and software in ~2-3 months.

Background: Radiation-induced scleral necrosis (RISN) is a rare, but a serious complication of brachytherapy for uveal melanoma. We aimed at analysing the incidence, timing and risk factors associated with development of RISN in a large institutional series. Methods: All consecutive cases with brachytherapy for uveal melanoma treated by the Departments of Ophthalmology and Radiotherapy at University Hospital Essen between 1999 and 2016 were eligible. Development of RISN during the post-treatment follow-up was recorded. A 1:2 propensity score matched case–control study was performed for the evaluation of the prognostic value of different tumour- and treatment-associated parameters. Results: RISN was documented in 115 (2.9%) of 3960 patients with uveal melanoma included in the final analysis, and occurred at the mean 30.3 months (range: 1.26–226 months) after brachytherapy. In the whole cohort, younger age (p = 0.042), plaque type (p = 0.001) and ciliary body involvement (p < 0.0001) were independently associated with the RISN occurrence. In the case–control study, multivariable weighted proportional hazard analysis discovered the association of the following additional tumour- and treatment-associated characteristics with RISN: posterior tumour margin anterior to equatorial region (p = 0.0003), extraocular tumour extension (p =

International audience; Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the performance of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in children and adolescents with suspected adnexal torsion (AT) after inconclusive initial ultrasound examination.Materials and methods: Twenty-eight girls with a mean age of 12±4 (SD) years (range: 1 month to 18years) were included. All had clinically suspected AT and inconclusive initial ultrasound findings followed by pelvic MRI as a second-line imaging modality. The final diagnosis was obtained by surgery or follow-up. Two radiologists blinded to the clinical, ultrasound and surgical data, retrospectively and independently reviewed MRI examinations. Clinical and MRI features associated with AT were searched for using univariate analyses.Result: Among the 28 patients, 10/28 patients (36%) had AT and 22/28 (79%) had an ovarian or tubal mass. AT was associated with an age

Deep Learning (DL) techniques for Natural Language Processing have been evolving remarkably fast. Recently, the DL advances in language modeling, machine translation, and paragraph understanding are so prominent that the potential of DL in Software Engineering cannot be overlooked, especially in the field of program learning. To facilitate further research and applications of DL in this field, we provide a comprehensive review to categorize and investigate existing DL methods for source code modeling and generation. To address the limitations of the traditional source code models, we formulate common program learning tasks under an encoder-decoder framework. After that, we introduce recent DL mechanisms suitable to solve such problems. Then, we present the state-of-the-art practices and discuss their challenges with some recommendations for practitioners and researchers as well.

The aim of our study was to prospectively evaluate the effectiveness of the Fistula Laser Closure (FiLaC®) technique in patients at high risk of anal incontinence and to determine the predictors of success and the impact of the procedure on anal continence. A prospective study was conducted on all patients treated with FiLaC® in our department in May 2016–April 2017, because they were at high risk of anal incontinence after fistulotomy, The fistula was considered healed when the internal and external openings were closed and the patient experienced was no pain or leakage. A total of 69 consecutive patients (34 males) with a median age of 40 years (33–53 years) were included in the study. One patient was lost to follow up. The fistulas were intersphincteric (3%), low (15%) or high (66%) trans-sphincteric, and suprasphincteric (16%). After a median follow-up period of 6.3 months (4.2–9.3), fistula healing was observed in 31 patients (45.6%). In univariate analysis, high trans-sphincteric fistulas (p = 0.007) and age over 50 years (p = 0.034) were significantly associated with healing. In multivariate analysis, only high trans-sphincteric fistulas were a predictive factor of significant success. No new cases of anal incontinence or any worsening in case of pre-existing anal incontinence were observed during follow-up. FiLaC® is particularly effective in cases of high trans-sphincteric fistulas (60% cure). This technique seems to be the most promising sphincter-saving technique available for this indication.

Software Engineering researchers are increasingly using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to automate Software Vulnerabilities (SVs) assessment using the descriptions in public repositories. However, the existing NLP-based approaches suffer from concept drift. This problem is caused by a lack of proper treatment of new (out-of-vocabulary) terms for the evaluation of unseen SVs over time. To perform automated SVs assessment with concept drift using SVs' descriptions, we propose a systematic approach that combines both character and word features. The proposed approach is used to predict seven Vulnerability Characteristics (VCs). The optimal model of each VC is selected using our customized time-based cross-validation method from a list of eight NLP representations and six well-known Machine Learning models. We have used the proposed approach to conduct large-scale experiments on more than 100,000 SVs in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). The results show that our approach can effectively tackle the concept drift issue of the SVs' descriptions reported from 2000 to 2018 in NVD even without retraining the model. In addition, our approach performs competitively compared to the existing word-only method. We also investigate how to build compact concept-drift-aware models with much fewer features and give some recommendations on the choice of classifiers and NLP representations for SVs assessment., Published as a full paper at the 16th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories 2019

Medical image segmentation has played an important role in medical analysis and widely developed for many clinical applications. Deep learning-based approaches have achieved high performance in semantic segmentation but they are limited to pixel-wise setting and imbalanced classes data problem. In this paper, we tackle those limitations by developing a new deep learning-based model which takes into account both higher feature level i.e. region inside contour, intermediate feature level i.e. offset curves around the contour and lower feature level i.e. contour. Our proposed Offset Curves (OsC) loss consists of three main fitting terms. The first fitting term focuses on pixel-wise level segmentation whereas the second fitting term acts as attention model which pays attention to the area around the boundaries (offset curves). The third terms plays a role as regularization term which takes the length of boundaries into account. We evaluate our proposed OsC loss on both 2D network and 3D network. Two common medical datasets, i.e. retina DRIVE and brain tumor BRATS 2018 datasets are used to benchmark our proposed loss performance. The experiments have shown that our proposed OsC loss function outperforms other mainstream loss functions such as Cross-Entropy, Dice, Focal on the most common segmentation networks Unet, FCN., ICPR 2020

In this paper, an overview of an IoT system prototype to monitor the ambient conditions of the Vietnamese—German University’s server room is discussed. The system makes use of a Raspberry Pi as the central processor, with on-site touch screen input and its own back-up power and Internet connection. The server room’s power status is to be recorded by the Raspberry Pi and reports back to the user. Ambient data is gathered by many ESP8266 microcontroller boards to make an ambient model of the isolated server room. A smartphone application is used to push the notification and ambient data, along with simple remote control commands to the user. Air conditioning is controlled automatically by these microcontroller boards by simulating the isolated AC’s remote control. This project concentrates on using off-the-shelf hardware components, well-known and well-maintained software libraries. Our monitoring results are satisfactory, with less than 2 °C in temperature error.

Background Eye salvaging therapy of malignant melanomas of the uvea can preserve the eye in most cases, but still about half of patients die from metastatic disease. Previous analyses of cell‐free DNA from plasma had shown detectable levels of tumor‐specific GNAQ/GNA11 mutations in patients with the clinical diagnosis of progressive disease. However, data on the time span that elapses from the detection of ctDNA in plasma to the clinical detection of metastases (diagnostic lead time) are missing. Methods We examined 135 patients with uveal melanoma. Cell‐free DNA was isolated from a total of 807 blood samples which were taken over a period of up to 41 months and analyzed for the presence of GNAQ/GNA11 mutations by deep amplicon sequencing. Results Twenty‐one of the 135 patients developed metastases or recurrence. A ctDNA signal was identified in the plasma of 17 of the 21 patients. In 10 patients, this ctDNA signal preceded the clinical diagnosis of metastasis by 2–10 months. In 10 other patients, a ctDNA signal was only detected in samples obtained shortly before or after radiotherapy. The presence of a ctDNA signal in 16 of the remaining 125 patients was linked to clinical manifestation of metastases (n = 14) or tumor recurrence (n = 2) with a sensitivity and specificity of 80% and 96%, respectively. Conclusion Detection of ctDNA in plasma can provide a diagnostic lead time over the clinical diagnosis of metastases or tumor recurrence. Longer lead times are to be expected if intervals between sampling are shortened., In metastasized uveal melanoma (UM) patients, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) can be detected in blood. Here we explored if cfDNA is a suitable biomarker for the early detection of metastatic disease in UM patients. Our data show that this biomarker fulfills the expectation as, overall, about half of the patients who developed metastases showed a positive ctDNA signal prior to the clinical diagnosis of metastatic disease with a lead time ranging between 2 and 10 months. Moreover, it is reasonable that, with more frequent sampling time points, diagnostic lead times will be even longer.

Thermal power plants (TPPs) can produce and supply electricity to power system as a main power source but power generation fuel cost of the TPPs is very expensive. So, the target of minimizing the cost is considered as a main duty in power system operation. This is called economic load dispatch (ELD) problem. In this paper, a novel algorithm, tunicate swarm algorithm (TSA), is applied for solving the ELD problem. The applied TSA is implemented for test systems with different numbers of units and different constraints such as power balance constraints, prohibited operating zones, power losses and power output limits of generators. The first test system is comprised of 6 units considering power balance constraints, power output limits, prohibited working zones and power losses while the second test system consists of 20 units taking into account the power balance constraints, power output limits and power losses. TSA is compared to a high number of previous methods in terms of the cost and TSA is concluded to be a powerful method since it can find less or equal cost with other compared methods.

International audience; Objective: To investigate cerebral anomalies other than Chiari type 2 malformation in fetuses with myelomeningocele (MMC).Design: A retrospective cohort study in a single tertiary centre.Setting: A review of associated cerebral anomalies in cases with prenatal diagnosis of myelomeningocele.Population: Seventy cases of fetal myelomeningocele.Methods: Ultrasound and MRI images were blindly reviewed. Postnatal imaging and results of the postmortem results were also reviewed. The association between cerebral anomalies and the following ultrasound findings was measured: level of the defect, ventriculomegaly, microcephaly and fetal talipes.Main outcome measures: A microcephaly was observed in 32/70 cases (46%) and a ventriculomegaly was observed in 39/70 cases (56%). Other cerebral anomalies were diagnosed in 47/70 (67%).Results: Other cerebral anomalies were represented by 42/70 cases with abnormal CC (60%), 8/70 cases with perinodular heterotopia (PNH; 11%), 2/70 cases with abnormal gyration (3%). MRI performed only in fetal surgery cases confirmed the ulltrasound findings in all cases and provided additional findings in two cases (PNH). Risk ratios of fetal cerebral anomalies associated with MMC did not reach significance for microcephaly, ventriculomegaly, talipes or the level of the defect There was an overall good correlation between pre- and postnatal findings with a Kappa value of 0.79 [95% CI 0.57-1] and 82% agreement.Conclusion: Fetal brain anomalies other than Chiari type 2 malformation are frequently observed in fetuses with myelomeningocele, predominantly represented by CC anomalies. Whether these associated cerebral anomalies have an impact on selecting cases eligible for fetal surgery needs further evaluation.Tweetable abstract: Fetal cerebral anomalies other than Chiari type 2 malformation, microcephaly, and ventriculomegaly may be associated with MMC in up to 67% of the cases.

We present in this paper a combined technique of long short-term memory and hidden Markov model to prediction problems of crack propagation in engineering. The primary advantage of the hidden Markov model is that the ability to learn with less information, in other words, its future states do not depend on past ones, based only on the present state. We use long short-term memory to train data, and output consequences improved by adding predicted different changes that are computed by hidden Markov model. Applying this combined method to numerical examples of forecasting crack propagation of singled-edge-notched beam forced by 4-point shear, crack-height growth in Marcellus shale under the hydraulic fracturing and deformations of dam structures made from fiber reinforced concrete material is addressed. The tests were carried out with many different sizes of experimental data. It was found that a combined long short-term memory - hidden Markov model results in more accurate solution than only using long short-term memory, especially in the case of the dataset that is lack of information.

Summary Introduction Dual Plane allows, according to J.B Tebbetts, to combine the advantages while reducing the drawbacks of the other implantation pockets. We assessed patient satisfaction using the Breast-Q © questionnaire after breast augmentation using the Dual Plane technique. Material and methods Our study involved evaluating data from the Breast-Q © questionnaire from 191 patients retrospectively. Other secondary criteria were studied such as postoperative complications, the correlation between satisfaction and implant volume, satisfaction and operating time, satisfaction and age of the patient. Results The Breast-Q © questionnaire allows us to assess the satisfaction of the patients in our series about their breasts, their implants, the information received and the outcome of the intervention. Physical, sexual and psychosocial well-being is also assessed. Conclusion Breast augmentation using a Dual Plane pocket according to Tebbetts achieves significant levels of satisfaction and well-being in patients. To our knowledge, this is the most important series devoted to the evaluation of these criteria after the use of the Dual Plane.

The operation and performance of top-gated sub-100 nanometer graphene channel field-effect transistors were investigated. The device model is designed for graphene with a narrow energy band gap epitaxially grown on the SiC substrate. The issue of graphene-metallic lead coupling is appropriately taken into account. By assuming the graphene-metal physisorption contact, a self-consistent calculation reproduces two regions of high carrier density at the ends of the graphene channels underneath the metallic leads according to the charge transferred effect between the metallic lead surface and graphene. The charge carrier densities in these source and drain regions, however, are not pinned, but vary with respect to the drain and gate voltages. It is shown that, in general, the graphene channel supports the ambipolar characteristics for all device samples, but for the samples with the channels shorter than 40 nm, the current-voltage characteristic takes the exponential law. Particularly, the current saturation with a rather small output conductance of 126 S/m was observed in a sufficiently large range of drain voltage due to the dominance of the thermionic emission and conventional tunneling mechanisms to the band-to-band tunneling. A rough assessment of the device performance was also carried out. It reveals an extremely high cutoff frequency in the order of $$10^3\hbox { GHz}$$ and a linear scaling rule for transistors with the channel length longer than 40 nm. The behaviour and magnitude of these quantities are consistent with an experimental study of sub-100 nm devices fabricated using the self-alignment technique.

Security is an increasing concern in software development. Developer Question and Answer (Q&A) websites provide a large amount of security discussion. Existing studies have used human-defined rules to mine security discussions, but these works still miss many posts, which may lead to an incomplete analysis of the security practices reported on Q&A websites. Traditional supervised Machine Learning methods can automate the mining process; however, the required negative (non-security) class is too expensive to obtain. We propose a novel learning framework, PUMiner, to automatically mine security posts from Q&A websites. PUMiner builds a context-aware embedding model to extract features of the posts, and then develops a two-stage PU model to identify security content using the labelled Positive and Unlabelled posts. We evaluate PUMiner on more than 17.2 million posts on Stack Overflow and 52,611 posts on Security StackExchange. We show that PUMiner is effective with the validation performance of at least 0.85 across all model configurations. Moreover, Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) of PUMiner is 0.906, 0.534 and 0.084 points higher than one-class SVM, positive-similarity filtering, and one-stage PU models on unseen testing posts, respectively. PUMiner also performs well with an MCC of 0.745 for scenarios where string matching totally fails. Even when the ratio of the labelled positive posts to the unlabelled ones is only 1:100, PUMiner still achieves a strong MCC of 0.65, which is 160% better than fully-supervised learning. Using PUMiner, we provide the largest and up-to-date security content on Q&A websites for practitioners and researchers., Accepted for publication at the 17th Mining Software Repositories 2020 conference

Uveal melanoma (UM) is fatal in ~50% of patients as a result of disseminated disease. This study aims to externally validate the Liverpool Uveal Melanoma Prognosticator Online V3 (LUMPO3) to determine its reliability in predicting survival after treatment for choroidal melanoma when utilizing external data from other ocular oncology centers. Anonymized data of 1836 UM patients from seven international ocular oncology centers were analyzed with LUMPO3 to predict the 10-year survival for each patient in each external dataset. The analysts were masked to the patient outcomes. Model predictions were sent to an independent statistician to evaluate LUMPO3&rsquo, s performance using discrimination and calibration methods. LUMPO3&rsquo, s ability to discriminate between UM patients who died of metastatic UM and those who were still alive was fair-to-good, with C-statistics ranging from 0.64 to 0.85 at year 1. The pooled estimate for all external centers was 0.72 (95% confidence interval: 0.68 to 0.75). Agreement between observed and predicted survival probabilities was generally good given differences in case mix and survival rates between different centers. Despite the differences between the international cohorts of patients with primary UM, LUMPO3 is a valuable tool for predicting all-cause mortality in this disease when using data from external centers.

Resume Introduction Le pectus excavatum est la malformation congenitale thoracique la plus frequente et constitue un motif de consultation courant en chirurgie plastique. Notre attitude consiste le plus souvent en un comblement de la depression par une prothese sur mesure en silicone. L’objectif de ce travail etait d’evaluer les gains apportes par la conception assistee par ordinateur (CAO) dans la fabrication des implants en comparaison de la methode classique de moulage plâtre. Patients et methode Nous avons collige l’ensemble des cas ayant beneficie de la mise en place d’implants sur mesure en silicone au sein du service de chirurgie plastique du CHU de Nantes. Les criteres de jugement etaient la qualite des resultats evaluee par le patient, et par l’equipe chirurgicale en aveugle sur photographies et par questionnaires standardises. Les delais pre-operatoires, les durees d’interventions et d’hospitalisation, le nombre de reprises chirurgicales a visee cosmetique, les suites et complications postoperatoires, etaient releves. Resultats Entre 1990 et 2016, 29 implants thoraciques en silicone ont ete poses dans notre service. Avant 2012, les implants etaient concus par moulage plâtre (n = 13). Apres cette date, les implants etaient concus par CAO (n = 16). Les patients jugeaient leurs resultats « bons » ou « excellents » dans 77 % et 86 % des cas respectivement dans les groupes Plâtre et CAO. Les notes attribuees par l’equipe chirurgicale aux reconstructions par implants CAO etaient meilleures que dans le groupe Plâtre : 8,17 versus 6,96 (p = 0,001). Les implants CAO etaient significativement moins perceptibles que les implants du groupe Plâtre. La duree operatoire etait reduite dans le groupe CAO : 60,2 versus 74,7 minutes dans le groupe Plâtre (p = 0,04), de meme que la duree d’hospitalisation : 3,5 versus 5,3 jours (p = 0,01). Il n’y avait pas de differences significatives entre les deux groupes en termes de complications postoperatoires. Conclusion La prise en charge des pectus excavatum par pose d’un implant en silicone sur mesure constitue une methode peu invasive et pourvoyeuse de bons resultats cosmetiques. La conception de ces implants est facilitee et amelioree qualitativement par la CAO.

ZusammenfassungPrimär intraokuläre Lymphome sind sehr seltene Tumoren, die sich noch weiter in primär vitreoretinale und die noch viel selteneren primär uvealen Lymphome unterteilen lassen. In den letzten Jahrzehnten hat die Inzidenz des primär vitreoretinalen Lymphoms (PVRL) deutlich zugenommen. Die differenzialdiagnostische Abgrenzung zur posterioren Uveitis ist mitunter schwierig und daher kommt es in einigen Fällen zur verschleppten Diagnosestellung mit einer verzögerten Therapieeinleitung. Dies ist insbesondere deshalb fatal, weil das primär vitreoretinale Lymphom häufig mit dem primären ZNS-Lymphom assoziiert ist. Goldstandard zur Diagnosesicherung vor Therapieeinleitung ist der zytologische bzw. histologische Nachweis von Lymphomzellen. Hierzu wird eine diagnostische Vitrektomie mit Glaskörperbiopsie, evtl. kombiniert mit einer transretinalen Biopsie, durchgeführt. Zytokinanalyse, Durchflusszytometrie sowie molekulare Diagnostik sind lediglich ergänzende Maßnahmen, sofern genügend Probenmaterial vorhanden ist. Sobald die Diagnose eines Lymphoms gestellt ist, muss in interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit zwischen Onkologen und Ophthalmologen ein Therapiekonzept erarbeitet werden.

Retinoblastome sind auserordentlich seltene, in ca. der Halfte der Falle erbliche fruhkindliche Augenneoplasien. Sie zeigen hochproliferative, CRX-positive („cone-rod homeobox protein“) undifferenzierte Tumorzellen (z. T. auch mit Rosettenbildung). Das Staging richtet sich nach der pTNM-Klassifikation und dem „International Retinoblastoma Staging System“ (IRSS). Die Grundlage fur eine eventuelle systemische Chemotherapie und/oder Radiatio ist der Nachweis einer postlaminaren Optikusinfiltration, ausgepragten Choroideainfiltration, Sklerainvasion oder sogar extraokularer Ausbreitung. In morphologisch schwierigen Fallen sind immunhistochemische Untersuchungen (CRX und Ki67) auserst hilfreich. Retinozytome (Retinome) zeigen keine undifferenzierten Tumorareale, sondern ausschlieslich eine Photorezeptordifferenzierung sowie eine mittels Ki67 nachgewiesene auffallend geringe Proliferation.

The escapement is one of the most important elements of horological mechanisms, though little is known about it despite the considerable research conducted on the subject. The Swiss lever escapement is the most common and accounts for roughly 95% of existing mechanical watch movements. The contact occurs roughly 500,000 times within only 24 h. Since it is impossible to instrument this mechanism due to its size and position in the mechanical watch movement, it was necessary to build a Finite Element Model of the Swiss lever escapement in order to obtain local contact conditions. Obtaining knowledge of the power dissipated by the friction in the contact will lead to minimizing friction and wear through better understanding of the phenomena involved.

The Covid-19 outbreak has turned out an opportunity for a recent noticeable increase in online shopping in Vietnam. Hence, this paper aims to discover how online shoppers react to their purchasing behaviour during Covid-19 time in terms of perceived benefits perspective. Based on the collected data from 427 Vietnamese online respondents during the social distancing period due to Covid-19, the research analyses the role of Covid-19 as a moderator variable in the relationship between benefits perception of the consumer and their online shopping activity. The result shows Covid-19 plays a moderating role in consumer’s awareness of utilities, which encourages shoppers towards Online shopping. However, the affection of society could be a reason that consumers become more hesitant to shop online. In the meanwhile, awareness of the Covid-19 pandemic and marketing policies do not impact on online shopping significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic which is a conflict with previous researches. These findings can contribute to understanding consumer behaviour comprehensively, help companies deal with similar situation as well as recommendations for the government to support businesses effectively in the future.

Context: Security Vulnerabilities (SVs) pose many serious threats to software systems. Developers usually seek solutions to addressing these SVs on developer Question and Answer (Q&A) websites. However, there is still little known about on-going SV-specific discussions on different developer Q&A sites. Objective: We present a large-scale empirical study to understand developers' SV discussions and how these discussions are being supported by Q&A sites. Method: We first curate 71,329 SV posts from two large Q&A sites, namely Stack Overflow (SO) and Security StackExchange (SSE). We then use topic modeling to uncover the topics of SV-related discussions and analyze the popularity, difficulty, and level of expertise for each topic. We also perform a qualitative analysis to identify the types of solutions to SV-related questions. Results: We identify 13 main SV discussion topics on Q&A sites. Many topics do not follow the distributions and trends in expert-based security sources such as Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) and Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). We also discover that SV discussions attract more experts to answer than many other domains, but some difficult SV topics (e.g., Vulnerability Scanning Tools) still receive quite limited support from experts. Moreover, we identify seven key types of answers given to SV questions on Q&A sites, in which SO often provides code and instructions, while SSE usually gives experience-based advice and explanations. Conclusion: Our findings provide support for researchers and practitioners to effectively acquire, share and leverage SV knowledge on Q&A sites., Accepted for publication at the 25th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE 2021)

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death globally. For an effective treatment of CVDs, automatic CVDs detection based on Electrocardiograph (ECG) monitoring is highly desirable. One major challenge in ECG classification is feature learning. This paper reviews developed techniques for feature extraction and compared their performances in Atrial Fibrillation (AF), Myocardial Infarction (MI) and Pericarditis detection. Feature extraction methods in the literature reviews can be divided into mainly four categories: linear feature, nonlinear feature, wavelet transform, deep learning. Three studies were implemented using database from PhysioNet to evaluate the effectiveness of different feature extraction techniques. The AF detection algorithm use morphology features, statistic features, spectral feature, and wavelet entropy, presented a sensitivity of 96%, specificity of 93% and accuracy of 94.1%. In the case of Pericarditis and MI classification, information thoery-based features including subband energy, permutation entropy, and approximate entropy are the most noteworthy features. The study of detecting MI using machine learning based model of Convolutional Neural Network showed a sensitivity of 92.04% which yield the most promising results.

Resume Le diverticule de Meckel est une malformation frequente chez l’enfant, le plus souvent asymptomatique, se compliquant dans 20 % des cas. De facon exceptionnelle, il peut etre le siege de developpement d’une tumeur, notamment un lymphome de Burkitt chez l’enfant. Plus rarement, comme chez l’adulte, des tumeurs stromales gastro-intestinales, des leiomyosarcomes ou des tumeurs neuro-endocrines de type carcinoide peuvent etre observees. Le diagnostic de pseudo-tumeur inflammatoire secondaire a une perforation est rare. Nous rapportons le cas d’une pseudo-tumeur inflammatoire developpee sur la pointe d’un diverticule de Meckel avec une heterotopie gastrique chez un nourrisson de 14 mois. Cette lesion avait fait evoquer une tumeur maligne. L’evolution a ete favorable apres exerese chirurgicale. La perforation d’un diverticule de Meckel secondaire a une ulceration sur heterotopie gastrique est un mode de revelation frequent. La decouverte secondaire d’une pseudo-tumeur inflammatoire reactionnelle a cette perforation doit faire avant tout discuter les diagnostics differentiels de tumeurs malignes.

Purpose Intraocular retinoblastoma is curable, but survivors with a heritable predisposition are at high risk for second malignancies. Because second malignancies are associated with high mortality, prognostic factors for second malignancy influence long-term overall survival. This study investigates the impact of all types of eye-preserving therapies on long-term survival in the complete German cohort of patients with heritable retinoblastoma. Patients and Methods Overall survival, disease staging using international scales, time period of diagnosis, and treatment type were analyzed in the 633 German children treated at the national reference center for heritable retinoblastoma. Results The 5-year overall survival of children diagnosed in Germany with heritable retinoblastoma between 1940 and 2008 was 93.2% (95% CI, 91.2% to 95.1%), but long-term mortality was increased compared with patients with nonheritable disease. Overall survival correlated with tumor staging, and 92% of patients were diagnosed with a favorable tumor stage (International Retinoblastoma Staging System stage 0 or I). Despite a 5-year overall survival of 97.4% (95% CI, 96.0% to 98.8%) in patients with stage 0 or I, only 79.5% (95% CI, 74.2% to 84.8%) of these patients survived 40 years after diagnosis. Long-term overall survival was reduced in children treated with eye-preserving radiotherapy compared with enucleation alone, and adding chemotherapy aggravated this effect. Conclusion The benefits of preserving vision must be balanced with the impact of eye-preserving treatments on long-term survival in heritable retinoblastoma, and the genetic background of the patient influences choice of eye-preserving treatment. Germline RB1 genetic analysis is important to identify heritable retinoblastoma among unilateral retinoblastoma cases. Eye-preserving radiotherapy should be carefully considered in patients with germline RB1 mutations. Life-long oncologic follow-up is crucial for all retinoblastoma survivors, and less detrimental eye-preserving therapies must be developed.

Background Survivors of heritable retinoblastoma carry a high risk to develop second cancers. Eye-preserving radiotherapy raises this risk, while the impact of chemotherapy remains less defined. Procedure This population-based study characterizes the impact of all treatment modalities on second cancers incidence and type after retinoblastoma treatment in Germany. Data on second cancer incidence in 648 patients with heritable retinoblastoma treated between 1940 and 2008 at the German national reference center for retinoblastoma were analyzed to identify associations with treatment. Results The cumulative incidence ratio (per 1,000 person years) of second cancers was 8.6 (95% confidence interval 7.0–10.4). Second cancer incidence was influenced by type of retinoblastoma treatment but not by the year of diagnosis or by sex. Radiotherapy and systemic chemotherapy increased the incidence of second cancers (by 3.0- and 1.8-fold, respectively). While radiotherapy was specifically associated with second cancers arising within the periorbital region in the previously irradiated field, chemotherapy was the strongest risk factor for second cancers in other localizations. Soft tissue sarcomas and osteosarcomas were the most prevalent second cancers (standardized incidence ratio 179.35 compared to the German population). Conclusions Second cancers remain a major concern in heritable retinoblastoma survivors. Consistent with previous reports, radiotherapy increased second cancer incidence and influenced type and localization. However, chemotherapy was the strongest risk factor for second malignancies outside the periorbital region. Our results provide screening priorities during life-long oncological follow-up based on the curative therapy the patient has received and emphasize the need for less-detrimental therapies for children with heritable retinoblastoma.

Purpose: Monosomy 3 (M3) in uveal melanoma (UM) obtained after enucleation is significantly associated with metastatic death. With improved biopsy techniques, samples from patients treated with eye-preserving methods have become available. As the choice of treatment depends on tumour size, patients treated with eye-preserving brachytherapy tend to have smaller tumours. It has to be determined if M3 is a valid marker for prognosis of these patients. Methods: Follow-up and clinical data were collected from a total of 451 UM patients: 291 patients were treated by brachytherapy. Tumour tissue was sampled by transretinal biopsy using the 23-gauge Essen biopsy forceps prior to therapy in 114 of them. Chromosome 3 status was determined by microsatellite analysis. Data were compared to those from 160 patients treated by enucleation. Results: Chromosome 3 status correlates significantly with disease-related survival in both patient groups. The proportion of tumours with M3 is lower in the brachytherapy group compared to patients treated with enucleation (25/77 32% and 102/144 71%, respectively). Conclusions: M3 is a valid marker for poor prognosis in uveal melanoma later treated by brachytherapy. The higher proportion of D3 tumours might explain, at least in part, the more favourable prognosis of patients treated by brachytherapy.

This paper describes the 3D simulations of an optimized modular brushless wound rotor synchronous machine using finite element method and computational fluid dynamics method. 2D finite element tool is used in the optimization in order to compute the torque and iron losses. Furthermore, an analytical thermal equation is used in order to calculate the surface temperature of the machine; this equation is used instead of the lumped parameter circuit due to the complexity of the machine structure. Its advantage is to reduce the computational time and therefore, to explore more deeply the whole search domain. However, the optimal results need to be validated by more precise numerical methods. These numerical verifications show that the leakage flux in the end-winding is high, leading to high iron losses in this machine. Moreover, the surface temperature differences between the analytical and numerical methods are discussed.

Importance Combining conventional chemotherapy with targeted therapy has been proposed to improve the pathologic complete response (pCR) rate in patients with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC). Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expression is an independent predictor of low overall survival in patients with IBC. Objective To evaluate the safety and efficacy of the anti-EGFR antibody panitumumab plus neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with primary human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative IBC. Design, Setting, and Participants Women with primary HER2-negative IBC were enrolled from 2010 to 2015 and received panitumumab plus neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Median follow-up time was 19.3 months. Tumor tissues collected before and after the first dose of panitumumab were subjected to immunohistochemical staining and RNA sequencing analysis to identify biomarkers predictive of pCR. Intervention Patients received 1 dose of panitumumab (2.5 mg/kg) followed by 4 cycles of panitumumab (2.5 mg/kg), nab-paclitaxel (100 mg/m 2 ), and carboplatin weekly and then 4 cycles of fluorouracil (500 mg/m 2 ), epirubicin (100 mg/m 2 ), and cyclophosphamide (500 mg/m 2 ) every 3 weeks. Main Outcomes and Measures The primary end point was pCR rate; the secondary end point was safety. The exploratory objective was to identify biomarkers predictive of pCR. Results Forty-seven patients were accrued; 7 were ineligible. The 40 enrolled women had a median age of 57 (range, 23-68) years; 29 (72%) were postmenopausal. Three patients did not complete therapy because of toxic effects (n = 2) or distant metastasis (n = 1). Nineteen patients had triple-negative and 21 had hormone receptor–positive IBC. The pCR and pCR rates were overall, 11 of 40 (28%; 95% CI, 15%-44%); triple-negative IBC, 8 of 19 (42%; 95% CI, 20%-66%); and hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative IBC, 3 of 21 (14%; 95% CI, 3%-36%). During treatment with panitumumab, nab-paclitaxel, and carboplatin, 10 patients were hospitalized for treatment-related toxic effects, including 5 with neutropenia-related events. There were no treatment-related deaths. The most frequent nonhematologic adverse event was skin rash. Several potential predictors of pCR were identified, including pEGFR expression and COX-2 expression. Conclusions and Relevance This combination of panitumumab and chemotherapy showed the highest pCR rate ever reported in triple-negative IBC. A randomized phase 2 study is ongoing to determine the role of panitumumab in patients with triple-negative IBC and to further validate predictive biomarkers. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:NCT01036087

Objectives To identify at prenatal ultrasound (US) the features of apparently isolated subependymal pseudocysts (SEPC) that may indicate underlying pathology and should lead to further investigations. Methods This was a retrospective study of cases with SEPC detected on prenatal US and/or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Those with apparently isolated SEPC at US were classified into two groups as follows: Group 1 (n = 29): normal prenatal US and MRI (except for SEPC) and normal outcome; Group 2 (n = 12): normal prenatal cerebral US (except for SEPC) and abnormal prenatal cerebral MRI with or without abnormal outcome. A third group (n = 9) included cases with abnormal prenatal US and MRI. The latter cases with obvious cerebral abnormalities at US were excluded from the statistical analysis as they do not represent a diagnostic dilemma for clinicians. Groups 1 and 2 were analyzed, comparing them with respect to their SEPC characteristics (size, number, location in relation to the caudothalamic notch and the ventricular horns and morphology) and extracerebral abnormalities. Results The mean ± SD SEPC great axis was longer in Group 2 (11.67 ± 5.82 mm) than it was in Group 1 (8.00 ± 5.64 mm) (P = 0.021), suggesting an optimal cut-off for size of SEPC of ≥ 9 mm (sensitivity = 75%, specificity = 62%) to maximize sensitivity for predicting pathological outcome. SEPC adjacent to the temporal horns and SEPC located posterior to the caudothalamic notch were observed more frequently in Group 2, indicating their association with poor outcome (P = 0.003 and P = 0.003, respectively). Atypical morphology and extracerebral abnormalities were observed more frequently in Group 2 (P = 0.013 and P = 0.044, respectively). There was no statistically significant difference between groups for either number or location of cysts along the inferior wall or adjacent to the lateral wall of the frontal horns (P = 0.591 and P = 0.156, respectively). Conclusion When apparently isolated SEPC are observed at prenatal US, further investigations should be performed under the following circumstances: (1) SEPC great axis ≥ 9 mm; (2) SEPC adjacent to the occipital and temporal horns; (3) SEPC located posterior to the caudothalamic notch; (4) SEPC with atypical morphology. Copyright © 2015 ISUOG. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Objective To compare the residual cholesteatoma detection accuracy of diffusion-weighted (DW) and T1 delayed sequences for magnetic resonance at one year postoperative with second-look surgery in pediatric patients who have undergone primary middle ear surgery for cholesteatoma. Methods This was a prospective monocentric consecutive study conducted in a tertiary academic referral center. Children were referred for MR imaging (MRI) one year after surgery. A 1.5 T MRI was utilized, using nonecho-planar DW images and delayed gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted images. Accuracy of magnetic resonance imaging was assessed by two radiologists before surgery. Interobserver and intraobserver agreements were assessed using the κ test. Magnetic resonance imaging data were compared with surgery, which was considered as the gold standard. Results Twenty-four consecutive unselected pediatric patients were included. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value for the first observer were of 40%, 86%, 67%, and 67%, respectively, and those for the second observer were 30%, 86%, 60%, and 63%, respectively. The only two cholesteatoma with a size superior to 3 mm were diagnosed before surgery, but the majority of small cholesteatoma were not detected. Conclusions MRI is a key examen to diagnosed the residual cholesteatoma but is limited by the size of the lesion under 3 mm. Delaying the realization of MRI during follow-up could increase sensitivity, thus avoiding misdiagnosis as well as unnecessary second look surgery.

Resume Le traitement chirurgical des hemorroides, radical et definitif, est indique chez environ 10 % des patients ayant une pathologie hemorroidaire. La technique de Milligan et Morgan est la plus repandue en France : elle est bien codifiee, a des resultats satisfaisants et durables si ses indications et le suivi postoperatoire sont bien respectes. Il existe egalement des moyens de diminuer la douleur postoperatoire.

This article proposes and verifies a novel intelligence approach for modelling forest fire danger, namely ICA-RVM, developed based on Relevance Vector Machine (RVM) and Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA), state-of-the art machine learning techniques that have not been investigated for forest fire danger modeling. RVM is used to establish a prediction model that computes probability of fire danger, whereas ICA is adopted to optimize the prediction model. The tropical forest at Gia Lai province, Central Highland (Vietnam), was used as a case study. Area under the curve (AUC) and statistical measures were used to assess the model performance. The result showed that the proposed model achieves high performances; AUC is 0.842 and 0.793 on the training dataset and the validation dataset, respectively. Compared to two benchmarks, Random Forests and Support Vector Machine, the proposed model performs better. Therefore, the propose ICA-RVM is a valid alternative system for forest fire danger modeling.

In this research, a low damping force shear-mode magneto-rheological (MR) damper that can replace conventional passive damper of a front-loading washing machine is designed and experimentally evaluated. In the design of the MR damper, required damping force, off-state friction force, size, and low cost of the MR damper are taken into account. Firstly, a suppression system for washing machines featuring MR dampers is proposed considering required damping force, available space, and cost of the system. Optimization of the proposed MR suspension system is then performed considering required damping force, off-state friction force, size, power consumption, and low cost of the MR damper. From the optimal results, simulated performance of the optimized MR damper is obtained and presented with discussions. A detailed design of the MR damper is then conducted, and a prototype MR damper is manufactured. In addition, experimental results on the prototype MR damper are obtained and compared with simulated ones. Finally, discussions on performance and application of the MR suspension system for front-loading washing machines are given.

The primary mechanically related problems of endovascular aneurysm repair are migration and type Ia endoleaks. They occur when there is no effective seal between the proximal end of the stent-graft and the vessel. In this work, we have developed several deployment simulations of parameterized stents using the finite element method (FEM) to investigate the contact stiffness of a nitinol stent in a realistic Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm (TAA). Therefore, we evaluated the following factors associated with these complications: (1) Proximal Attachment Site Length (PASL), (2) stent oversizing value (O%), (3) different friction conditions of the stent/aorta contact, and (4) proximal neck angulation α. The simulation results show that PASL>18 mm is a crucial factor to prevent migration at a neck angle of 60°, and the smoothest contact condition with low friction coefficient (μ=0.05). The increase in O% ranging from 10% to 20% improved the fixation strength. However, O%≥25% at 60° caused eccentric deformation and stent collapse. Higher coefficient of friction μ>0.01 considerably increased the migration risk when PASL=18 mm. No migration was found in an idealized aorta model with a neck angle of 0°, PASL=18 mm and μ=0.05. Our results suggest carefully considering the stent length and oversizing value in this neck morphology to strengthen the contact and prevent migration.

This paper suggests a proactive approach in the selection of transportation management systems (TMS). The idea is to perform a two directional benchmark analysis, where the company shall in the first step benchmark its business requirements to the market solutions. In the second step it shall assess its maturity level of its transportation management organization and business processes to determine the priorities of its optimization plans. This essential step will help the company to target precisely the requirements of its future TMS. This approach was applied to a major European airline company, from starting with the essential and necessary steps to get from the identification of the need for a TMS to the pre-selection of vendors and recommendation on how to proceed on the project to enhance maximal collaboration in transportation management.

Surprisingly, lung disease is still one of the leading causes of deaths in the developed countries, including UK. According to the UK National Health Service (NHS), Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is the fifth biggest killer disease in the UK, killing approximately 25,000 people a year. This prob-lem is even worse in developing countries such as Vietnam, India and China, where air pollution is a big problem and the disease awareness is under-recognised. The NHS has set out one of its challenges is to identify people with lung disease earlier in the disease’s development pathway, in order to pro-vide more effective and timely intervention and treatment. This paper presents a novel Inspired Sinewave Device (ISD) to measure lung function and inhomogeneity. Both set of infor-mation are important for diagnosis and detection of early lung diseases. ISD has the potential to replace or supplement the traditional spirometry in the routine lung function testing. The paper describes both the principle of ISD and a set of experi-mental results demonstrating the capability of ISD to asymp-totically detect asthmatic symptoms. Finally the paper discuss-es the future plan, including the testing of 300+ COPD patients at the Oxford Respiratory Trials Unit in UK, and the potential collaborations among research institutions in Vietnam and UK about cost-effective and innovative developments of smart devices, biosensors, lab-on-chips and telehealth solutions for the routine lung function testing, diagnosis and evaluations of early lung diseases.

The provision of surgical instruments is often done by surgeon and nurse clinicians but this way sometimes encounters some issues such as supplying the wrong instruments, delays, or seriously that is to forget the surgical instruments inside the body of a patient. This study presents a computer vision system which identifies the hand symbols and the surgical instruments’ position using a Kinect sensor in the operating room. The system aims at finding and locating a hand and its midpoint based on a depth image from Kinect sensor and it is thus able to recognize the hand symbols from a surgeon in order to control a manipulator to pick the right instrument. Then, this system detects position and direction of this instrument on a table to direct a robot to pick it up properly. The experiments were conducted to show the positive results of this system.

Biosensors are able to provide fast, accurate and reliable detec-tions and monitoring of cancer cells, as well as to determine the effectiveness of anticancer chemotherapy agents in cancer treatments. These have attracted a great attention of research communities, especially in the capabilities of detecting the path-ogens, viruses and cancer cells in narrow scale that the conven-tional apparatus and techniques do not have. This paper pre-sents technologies and applications of biosensors for detections of cancer cells and related diseases, with the focus on the cur-rent research and technology development about biosensors in Vietnam, a typical developing country with a very high number of patients diagnosed with cancers in recent years, but having a very low cancer survival rate. The role of biosensors in early detections of diseases, cancer screening, diagnosis and treat-ment, is more and more important; especially it is estimated that by 2020, 60-70% new cases of cancers and nearly 70% of cancer deaths will be in economically disadvantaged countries. The paper is also aimed to open channels for the potential R&D collaborations with partners in Vietnam in the areas of innovative design and development of biosensors in particular and medical technology devices in general.

Purpose : EndoVascular Aneurysm Repair (EVAR) can be indicated to prevent Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) breaking. However, several complications may occur during and after surgery, such as endoleaks or migration. The aim of this work is to develop and validate an experimental set-up designed to reproduce the comportment of an abdominal aorta with aneurysm. Consequently, this paper presents the proof of concept of the experimental set-up. Materiel and methods : We have developed an experimental set-up based on a patient-specific aorta phantom with an aneurysm. Physiological conditions that are influent for EVAR (blood flow and mechanical support) are applied. The set-up combines UltraSound (US) and Digital Image Stereo-Correlation (DISC) measurements to evaluate the vascular structure motion due to blood flow and EVAR. Results : Preliminary results show that our experimental set-up allows measuring local surface deformations on the phantom using DISC as well as motions in the vessel wall thickness using US without surgical material. The measurements from the two techniques are consistent with the applied pressure, realistic and complementary. Conclusion : The set-up and methods in this paper are validated and our proof of concept is established. Future work will focus on the simultaneous use of the two measurement tools (US and DISC) and the introduction of stent-grafts inside the phantom during pulsed cycles. Such measurements of local deformations and motions will help understanding possible complications of EVAR.

Robust facial hair detection and segmentation is a highly valued soft biometric attribute for carrying out forensic facial analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel and fully automatic system, called SparCLeS, for beard/moustache detection and segmentation in challenging facial images. SparCLeS uses the multiscale self-quotient (MSQ) algorithm to preprocess facial images and deal with illumination variation. Histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) features are extracted from the preprocessed images and a dynamic sparse classifier is built using these features to classify a facial region as either containing skin or facial hair. A level set based approach, which makes use of the advantages of both global and local information, is then used to segment the regions of a face containing facial hair. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed system in detecting and segmenting facial hair regions in images drawn from three databases, i.e., the NIST Multiple Biometric Grand Challenge (MBGC) still face database, the NIST Color Facial Recognition Technology FERET database, and the Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) database.