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The segregation among benign and malignant nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) from endoscopic images is one of the most challenging issues in cancer diagnosis because of the many conceivable shapes, regions, and image intensities, hence, a proper scientific technique is required to extract the features of cancerous NPC tumors. In the present research, a neural network-based automated discrimination system was implemented for the identification of malignant NPC tumors. In the proposed technique, five different types of qualities, such as local binary pattern, gray-level co-occurrence matrix, histogram of oriented gradients, fractal dimension, and entropy, were first determined from the endoscopic images of NPC tumors and then the following steps were executed: (1) an enhanced adaptive approach was employed as the post-processing method for the classification of NPC tumors, (2) an assessment foundation was created for the automated identification of malignant NPC tumors, (3) the benign and cancerous cases were discriminated by using region growing method and artificial neural network (ANN) approach, and (4) the efficiency of the outcomes was evaluated by comparing the results of ANN. In addition, it was found that texture features had significant effects on isolating benign tumors from malignant cases. It can be concluded that in our proposed method texture features acted as a pointer as well as a help instrument to diagnose the malignant NPC tumors. In order to examine the accuracy of our proposed approach, 159 abnormal and 222 normal cases endoscopic images were acquired from 249 patients, and the classifier yielded 95.66% precision, 95.43% sensitivity, and 95.78% specificity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel approach of fuzzy Petri net (FPN) is presented to aircraft terrain following (TF) through aircraft flights. The FPN controller system as presented in this paper determine where the aircraft needs to modification its altitude. Depending on the concepts of real-time system applications the decision-maker (i.e. Terrain-Following Radar (TFR)) will be promising notwithstanding for hard terrains in expression of shape and features. The implementation process for terrain following collaborative design is fuzzily dedicated by the algorithm of FPN. The FPN approach employs special connections among existing Slope, Height, and Spacing of the terrain with aircraft flights velocity overhead the ground to construct appropriate FPN rules. Settling on knowledge implies a basic decision making over passing across or over a terrain. Slope angle of terrain (Sl1 and Sl2), spacing is the ratio of the largest and smallest peak-to-peak terrain (Sp1 and Sp2) and height of vehicle (He1 and He2), and the main system is the velocity (Sl, He and Sp) is output all the inputs and outputs are linguistic variables. The case study of aircraft flights shows the effectiveness of the FPN approach as compared to other existing approaches. Based on the FPN approach the results illustrate a perfect chasing while using four models with a number of fuzzy rules equal to 200 rules will causes an optimal result. While a suitable height of an aircraft flights above the ground is substantial this given us good motivation to develop a new approach in maintaining the height of aircraft. Finally, the presented method is applied with low-level flight to be authenticity be applied for such applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The use of CT angiography (CTA) or venous couplers (VCs) has led to shorter operative times in free flap breast reconstruction (FFBR). However, there are no reports on the effect of these two interventions relative to each other or combined., Methods: Abdominal based FFBRs performed by a single surgeon before introduction of either intervention were compared to those with VC only, and those after the addition of CTA to VCs (CT-VC). Operative time was defined as from "knife-to-skin" to insertion of the last stitch., Results: One hundred and twenty patients; 40 without intervention (WI), 40 with VC, and 40 with CT-VC. Introduction of VCs did not significantly reduce operative time compared to WI (P=0.73). However, patients in the CT-VC group had significantly shorter operations vs. WI (472 vs. 586 min, P<0.00001) and vs. VC alone (472 vs. 572 min, P=0.0006). Similarly, introduction of each intervention showed a stepwise decrease in ischaemia time (WI vs. VC: 100 vs. 89 min, P=0.0106; VC vs. CT-VC: 89 vs. 80 min, P=0.0307; WI vs. CT-VC: 100 vs. 80 min, P<0.00001)., Conclusions: Combination of CTA and VC significantly reduced operative and ischaemic times for FFBR; this was predominantly due to use of CTA. CTA mitigates the surgical learning curve as demonstrated by shorter operating times via providing a vascular anatomy roadmap, thus facilitating flap harvest., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.