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Two-dimensional echocardiography (2DE) Simpson methods is the most frequently used imaging modality to assess Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). LVEF is an important predictor of morbidity and mortality in a wide range of patients and clinical scenarios. Despite its importance in prognosis and clinical decision making, most echocardiography laboratories currently determine EF primarily by visual estimation, which is highly experience-dependent and sensitive to intra- and inter-observer variability and suboptimal accuracy and repeatability. Over the last decade, 3-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) has become increasingly implemented in clinical practice. The automated 3D HeartModelThe objective of the study was to compare the automated 3D HeartModelThe study prospectively enrolled 165 patients with symptoms of LV dysfunction (ischemic or nonischemic) and New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class I-III, referred for an echocardiographic study to evaluate the LV volumes and LV ejection fraction (LVEF) during the period from March 2020 to March 2022. Echocardiographic images were acquired by experienced echocardiographers using a commercially available Philips EPIQ machine (Koninklijke Philips Ultrasound, USA) equipped with X5-1 Matrix probe for 2DE and DHM 3DE acquisitions, respectively.2D Simpson methods echocardiography results for estimated LVEF were 38.43 ± 1.70 in patients with NYHA class I-II, 30.53 ± 1.60 in patients with NYHA class III. Using 3D Heart Model, LVEF were 38.23 ± 1.71 in patients with NYHA class I-II and 30.27 ± 1.50 in patients with NYHA class III. The results of 2D Simpson methods echocardiography for estimated LVEDVi in NYHA class I-II and NYHA class III were 99.06 ± 6.36 ml/m2, 121.96 ± 2.93 ml/m2 respectively, LVESVi were 60.91 ± 3.91 ml/m2, 84.74 ± 2.70 ml/m2 respectively, for 3D Heart Model, LVEDVi in NYHA class I-II and NYHA class III were 100.07 ± 6.72, 121.38 ± 3.01 ml/m2 respectively, LVESVi were 61.75 ± 3.94 ml/m2, 84.73 ± 2.33 ml/m2 respectively. 2DE measurement of LV volumes and EF was completed in 6.1 ± 0.8 min. per patient. 3DE HeartModel3D DHM provides fast and accurate LV volumes and LVEF quantitation, as it avoids geometric assumptions and left ventricular foreshortening, has better reproducibility and has incremental value to predict adverse outcomes in comparison with conventional 2DE. In the future major benefit of AI in echocardiography is expected from improvements in automated analysis and interpretation to reduce workload and improve clinical outcome.

Estimation of bleeding risk is an unmet need for individualized therapy in acute pulmonary embolism (PE) patients with increased mortality risk.We analyzed the association between various patients' characteristics and occurrence of major bleeding (MB) according to the modified International Society of Thrombosis and Hemostasis (ISTH) criteria ("overt" bleeding is the only modification from the original criteria) at 7 days from admission to the hospital and thrombolytic therapy with a tissue-plasminogen activator (tPA). Pulmonary embolism bleeding score index (PEBSI) was created using multivariate regression analyses, and finely, dichotomous index was used for the discrimination of patients with low risk for MB from those with high risk.During the 6-year period (2015-2021) 367 PE patients were treated with tPA and included in the Regional PE registry. Among them, 29 (7.9%) fulfilled the criteria for MB. Five factors were identified as significantly associated with MB and were used to build the PEBSI score: previous bleeding, recent surgery, diabetes, the use of drugs that could be associated with bleeding, and anemia. PEBSI score showed c-index for 7-day MB 0.794 (95CI% 0.698-0.889). Patients with PEBSI scores of 0 or 1 had a low risk for MB (2.8%) and those with scores1 had a high risk for MB (18.6%) (p 0.001). Internal validation of PEBSI score using a randomly, equally split method confirmed the discriminative value of the PEBSI score.Novel PEBSI score has significant power to discriminate patients with low risk for MB on thrombolytic therapy from those with high risk.

Introduction/Objective The purpose of the current Echocardiographic Society of Serbia (ECHOS) survey was to assess echocardiography practice in Serbia during the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic Methods An online survey consisting of 12 questions about the usa of echocardiography, the availability of portable ultrasound devices and personal protective equipment (PPE) was sent to all ECHOS members Results Overall, 126 ECHOS members (43%) answered the survey One-third of respondents (36%) were physicians from specialized COVID-19 centers During the pandemic, indications for echocardiographic examination were restricted in both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 centers In COVID-19 centers, 41% of respondents performed lung ultrasound to each patient versus 26% in non-COVID-19 centers Transesophageal echocardiography was not performed in suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases in any center Portable ultrasound devices were available to 66% of respondents from COVID-19 versus 44% of respondents from non-COVID-19 centers (p = 0 018) The respondents reported regular use of PPE, regardless of the patient’s COVID-19 status and found their personal knowledge about protective measures and use of PPE satisfactory Conclusion During the COVID-19 pandemic in Serbia, indications for echocardiography were restricted to clinical scenarios in which the results of examination were expected to alter patient management In both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 centers, the use of PPE was in line with national and international recommendations A wider availability of portable ultrasound devices and application of lung ultrasound could improve patient management in similar situations in the future © 2020, Serbia Medical Society All rights reserved

To examine the relationship between admission glucose (AG) level and short-term in-hospital mortality and to investigate the association between hyperglycemia and major bleeding in PE patients with and without DMT2.We evaluated 1165 patients with diagnosed acute PE with multi-detector computed tomography pulmonary angiography (MDCT-PA) enrolled in the Regional multicenter PE registry (REPER). The study population was classified to patients with diabetes mellitus type 2 (DMT2) and those without diabetes. According to quartiles of AG patients, both groups separately were categorized into four subgroups (DMT2 I: 7.5 mmol/L; II: 7.5-10.0 mmol/L; III: 10.0-15.7 mmol/L; IV: 15.7 mmol/L and (non-DMT2 I: 5.5 mmol/L; II: 5.5-6.3 mmol/L; III: 6.3-7.9 mmol/L; IV: 7.9 mmol/L).All-cause mortality was higher in the DMT2 group (9.5% vs. 18.2%, p 0.001), and PE-cause mortality was 6% for the patients without DMT2 and 12.4% for DMT2 patients (p = 0.02). The patients in the fourth AG quartiles in both groups, without DMT2 and with DMT2, had significantly higher all-cause and PE-cause in-hospital mortality compared with the first quartile. Rates of major bleeding were similar between the groups. On the multivariable analysis, after adjusting for age, gender and mortality risk, the adherence in the fourth AG quartile had an independent predictive value for all-cause death (HR 2.476, 95% CI 1.017-6.027) only in DM patients.In our cohort of patients with acute PE, diabetes was associated with increased rates for all-cause and PE-cause mortality.

Echocardiography is an indispensable diagnostic tool of cardiologists and other specialties involved in proving care to cardiovascular patients. In this paper, Echocardiographic Society of Serbia provides its viewpoint regarding the organization of basic education in transthoracic echocardiography, aiming at homogeneity of education and improving the quality of echocardiographic training in Serbia.

Introduction. Since clinical and electrocardiographic features of various cardiac disorders may overlap, the differential diagnosis of left ventricular (LV) dysfunction may be difficult even for the most experienced physicians. Recent advances in cardiac imaging may help clinicians to establish an accurate diagnosis and initiate adequate treatment. The aim of this case report is to raise awareness of a very short-lasting LV dysfunction during respiratory infections and to underline the importance of multimodality imaging in this clinical setting. Case outline. A previously healthy 37-year-old male presented with atypical chest pain and ST-segment elevation in the inferolateral leads during severe mental stress and acute respiratory infection. Acute myocardial infarction, myocarditis, coronary vasospasm and stress cardiomyopathy were all considered as a differential diagnosis. A rapid onset of severe LV dysfunction and a complete recovery within 4 days was detected by echocardiography and further evaluated by multimodality imaging, including multislice computed tomography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. Conclusion. Severe, but very short-lasting LV dysfunction may be triggered by various causes, including upper respiratory tract infections. Since the symptoms of respiratory infections may obscure those of LV dysfunction, myocardial dysfunction in these patients may go undetected with possible serious consequences.

Overlapped fingerprints can be potentially present in several civil applications and criminal investigations. Segmentation of overlapped fingerprints is a required step in the process of fingerprint separation and subsequent verification. Overlapped fingerprint segmentation is performed manually (and the resulting manually drawn masks are a required additional input) in all of the overlapped latent fingerprints separation approaches in the literature, which make them only semi-automatic. This study proposes a novel overlapped fingerprint mask segmentation approach, thereby filling that gap in the development of fully automated fingerprint separation solutions. The proposed method uses convolutional neural networks to classify image blocks into three classes - background, single region, and overlapped region. The proposed approach shows satisfactory performance on three different datasets and opens the door for full automation of fingerprint separation algorithms, which is a very promising research area.

This chapter describes a machine learning based approach for overlapped fingerprint separation. The algorithm works in a block-based fashion: after producing an initial estimation of the orientation fields present in the overlapped fingerprint image, it uses a neural network to separate the mixed orientation fields, which are then post-processed to correct remaining errors and enhanced using the global orientation field enhancement model. The proposed separation method has been successfully tested on two different datasets.

Introduction/Objective. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbation is mostly triggered by infectious agents and seriously compromises the patient’s quality of life and predicts a poor outcome of the disease as well. If the signs of the probable bacterial cause of COPD exacerbation are presented in an intubated patient, initial antimicrobial management must be launched. Depending on the results of the respiratory system sample cultures, the initial antimicrobials can be changed or continued. The objective of this study is to present in-hospital suggestions regarding the use of the initial antimicrobial management of urgently intubated COPD adults with the probable bacterial cause of exacerbations, considering the source of bacterial acquisition (i.e. facility- or community-acquired bacteria). Methods. The cross-sectional study covered 51 patients urgently intubated on admission to the medical Intensive Care Unit of the Zemun Clinical Hospital Center during 2015/2016. The patients were divided into two groups: community-acquired (n = 26) and facility-acquired infection group (n = 25). The respiratory system samples were processed in the Microbiology Laboratory. Results. Acinetobacter and Pseudomonas spp. were the most frequently isolated bacteria in both groups, followed by Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiella spp. as the third most frequent bacteria in the community- and facility-acquired group, respectively. The parallel use of tigecycline and aminoglycosides proved to cover a sensitive microbial spectrum in 52% of examinees of the community-acquired and 32% of examinees of the facility-acquired group. Conclusion. The present study suggests the initial management of intubated adults with probable bacterial infection-induced COPD exacerbation by the parallel use of tigecycline and aminoglycosides. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 173033]

This paper presents a novel method for fingerprint ROI (region of interest) segmentation using Deep learning technique — Convolutional Neural Networks. Experimental results, obtained using a publicly available test database of 200 fingerprint images in two variations — with and without Gaussian noise, demonstrate that this method is competitive with Fourier coefficients and NN based method for fingerprint images without noise, while it significantly outperforms it, in all three figures of merit, for fingerprint images with noise.

This article is the first thorough study of average population exposure to third generation network (3G)-induced electromagnetic fields (EMFs), from both uplink and downlink radio emissions in different countries, geographical areas, and for different wireless device usages. Indeed, previous publications in the framework of exposure to EMFs generally focused on individual exposure coming from either personal devices or base stations. Results, derived from device usage statistics collected in France and Serbia, show a strong heterogeneity of exposure, both in time, that is, the traffic distribution over 24 h was found highly variable, and space, that is, the exposure to 3G networks in France was found to be roughly two times higher than in Serbia. Such heterogeneity is further explained based on real data and network architecture. Among those results, authors show that, contrary to popular belief, exposure to 3G EMFs is dominated by uplink radio emissions, resulting from voice and data traffic, and average population EMF exposure differs from one geographical area to another, as well as from one country to another, due to the different cellular network architectures and variability of mobile usage. Bioelectromagnetics. 37:382-390, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Introduction. The natural history of atherosclerosis can be assessed using different methods including quantitative coronary angiography, intravascular ultrasound, B-mode ultrasound, electron-beam computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. Regression of atherosclerosis. Although the first investigations regarding effects of low cholesterol diet on atherosclerosis progression in animals were performed almost 100 years ago, researches on potential induction of atherosclerosis regression in humans began only recently, in the past 20 years. To date, many studies assessing different drugs and study protocols on natural evolution of atherosclerosis have been performed. They include use of diet and physical activity, different hypolipemic drugs, especially statins, ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, hormone replacement therapy, antioxidants, and recently, use of recombinant apolipoproteins. Statins and atherosclerosis. It has been established that statins given to patients with, or even without verified coronary artery disease, slow progression of atherosclerosis. These effects of statins are likely due to a combination of their metabolic and pleiotropic properties and might in part explain the positive effects of these drugs on overall cardiovascular mortality and morbidity. Furthermore, applied in high doses, these drugs may induce real atherosclerosis regression, especially in asymptomatic patients in the early stages of the disease. .

INTRODUCTION It is not clear whether associated aortic regurgitation (AR) should be regarded as a risk factor in patients undergoing surgery for severe aortic stenosis (AS). Some authors have suggested that morbidity and mortality are increased in these patients as compared to patients operated for pure AS, whereas others have found no difference of the outcome and prognosis between these groups. OBJECTIVE This study made an attempt to compare the outcome and prognosis following the surgical intervention in patients with severe AS and associated AR and those operated for pure AS, as well as to determine predictive value of clinical, functional and echocardiographic data for the outcome of surgery. METHODS Study population consisted of 122 consecutive patients operated at Dedinje Cardiovascular Institute during 1999 due to severe AS, defined as mean gradient over aortic valve >30 mmHg. The patients were divided into AS group (63 patients with AS without AR or with mild AR) and AS+AR group (59 patients with AS and moderate, severe or very severe AR). The patients were subjected to control clinical, functional and echocardiographic examinations 12 and 18 months following the surgery. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Preoperatively, the patients in AS group were older and had coronary artery disease more frequently, whereas patients in AS+AR group had higher left ventricular volumes and mass. Preoperative NYHA class, ejection fraction, mean gradient over aortic valve, type and size of the implanted mechanical prosthesis, and the incidence of associated coronary artery bypass surgery were similar between the groups. Similarly, the operative mortality was similar in AS and AS+AR groups (1.6% vs 8.5%, respectively, p=0.11). Twelve months postoperatively, there were no difference of average NYHA class and NYHA class III/ IV between the groups. The patients in AS+AR group were unable to walk >300 meters on 6 minute walk test more frequently than those in AS group (64% vs. 36%, respectively; p=0.043). Eighteen months postoperatively, NYHA class III/IV was found more frequently in AS+AR than in AS group (26% vs. 8%, respectively; p=0.0343). In patients with associated AR, there was no difference of NYHA class with respect to the severity of AR (p=0.815). Multivariate analysis found the association of more than mild AR as an independent predictor of poor functional capacity, irrespective of its severity. CONCLUSION Patients with severe AS and associated AR have poorer postoperative functional capacity as compared to patients operated for pure AS.

Background. The impact of thrombolytic therapy on the incidence of complex ventricular arrhythmias is not yet clarified. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of thrombolytic therapy on the incidence of complex ventricular arrhythmias, as well as long term association between complex ventricular arrhythmias and left ventricular remodelling, and their impact on five-year lethality. Methods. Ninety seven consecutive patients with first acute myocardial infarction (streptokinase was administered in 58 patients) underwent 24-hours Holter monitoring at discharge. Ventricular arrhythmias were classified according to Lown classification, and patients were grouped into the group with simple ventricular arrhythmias (Lown class 0 to 2), and the group with complex ventricular arrhythmias (Lown class 3 to 5). Echocardiography was performed at discharge, and six and twelve months after the infarction. Left ventricular volume indexes and ejection fraction was determined using Simpson's biplane formula. Results. In patients with complex ventricular arrhythmias left ventricular volume indexes were higher and ejection fraction was lower throughout the study, whereas wall motion score index was higher one year after the infarction. On the other hand, these variables were similar throughout the follow-up within the groups of patients with and without complex ventricular arrhythmias who received thrombolytic therapy. The incidence of complex ventricular arrhythmias was similar in thrombolysed and non-thrombolysed patients (11/58 vs. 5/39). There was no difference in five year lethality between patients with and without complex ventricular arrhythmias (4/16 vs. 13/81 patients). Conclusion. Our data indicated that left ventricular remodelling in patients with complex ventricular arrhythmias was not progressive after hospital discharge. The presence of complex ventricular arrhythmias was not associated with the increased five-year lethality, despite of more pronounced left ventricular remodelling. It occured that thrombolysis per se had no influence on the incidence of complex ventricular arrhythmias in the late hospital phase after the first acute myocardial infarction.

International audience; Echocardiography is one of the most powerful diagnostic and monitoring tools available to the modern emergency/ critical care practitioner. Currently, there is a lack of specific European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging/Acute Cardiovascular Care Association recommendations for the use of echocardiography in acute cardiovascular care. In this document, we describe the practical applications of echocardiography in patients with acute cardiac conditions, in particular with acute chest pain, acute heart failure, suspected cardiac tamponade, complications of myocardial infarction, acute valvular heart disease including endocarditis, acute disease of the ascending aorta and post-intervention complications. Specific issues regarding echocardiography in other acute cardiovascular care scenarios are also described

This paper proposes ANN based method for fingerprint ROI (Region of Interest) segmentation. Proposed ANNs where trained with 10000 samples extracted from 20 fingerprint images (in grey-scale and binary modes). The experimental results, including three statistical performance indicators, shows very good performance of the proposed method on a test database of 200 fingerprint images.

BACKGROUND: An elevated heart rate is an established marker of cardiovascular risk. Previous analyses have suggested that ivabradine, a heart-rate-reducing agent, may improve outcomes in patients with stable coronary artery disease, left ventricular dysfunction, and a heart rate of 70 beats per minute or more.METHODS: We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of ivabradine, added to standard background therapy, in 19,102 patients who had both stable coronary artery disease without clinical heart failure and a heart rate of 70 beats per minute or more (including 12,049 patients with activity-limiting angina [class ≥II on the Canadian Cardiovascular Society scale, which ranges from I to IV, with higher classes indicating greater limitations on physical activity owing to angina]). We randomly assigned patients to placebo or ivabradine, at a dose of up to 10 mg twice daily, with the dose adjusted to achieve a target heart rate of 55 to 60 beats per minute. The primary end point was a composite of death from cardiovascular causes or nonfatal myocardial infarction.RESULTS: At 3 months, the mean (±SD) heart rate of the patients was 60.7±9.0 beats per minute in the ivabradine group versus 70.6±10.1 beats per minute in the placebo group. After a median follow-up of 27.8 months, there was no significant difference between the ivabradine group and the placebo group in the incidence of the primary end point (6.8% and 6.4%, respectively; hazard ratio, 1.08; 95% confidence interval, 0.96 to 1.20; P=0.20), nor were there significant differences in the incidences of death from cardiovascular causes and nonfatal myocardial infarction. Ivabradine was associated with an increase in the incidence of the primary end point among patients with activity-limiting angina but not among those without activity-limiting angina (P=0.02 for interaction). The incidence of bradycardia was higher with ivabradine than with placebo (18.0% vs. 2.3%, PCONCLUSIONS: Among patients who had stable coronary artery disease without clinical heart failure, the addition of ivabradine to standard background therapy to reduce the heart rate did not improve outcomes. (Funded by Servier; SIGNIFY Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN61576291.).

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of metabolic syndrome (MS) on left ventricular (LV) structure and function depending on gender.The study included 235 never-treated MS subjects and 138 controls. MS was defined as the presence of three or more National Cholesterol Education Program's Adult Treatment Panel III criteria. All the subjects underwent laboratory blood tests and complete two-dimensional, pulsed, and tissue Doppler echocardiography.LV structure, diastolic function, and global function were significantly impaired in all MS subjects. Multivariate analysis of individual MS factors showed that increased blood pressure (BP) and impaired fasting glucose were independently associated with LV hypertrophy in women, whereas the only independent predictor in men was increased BP. The same analysis revealed that the combination of impaired glucose level, abdominal obesity, and dyslipidemia was associated with LV hypertrophy only in women. Higher BP, impaired fasting glucose, and triglycerides level were independently associated with LV diastolic dysfunction in women, whereas higher BP was the only independent predictor in men. The combination of increased BP, fasting glucose, and dyslipidemia was independently associated with LV diastolic dysfunction only in women.Different MS factors are responsible for LV remodeling in women and men. The metabolic sequence of MS is more important for LV remodeling in women.

Item does not contain fulltext BACKGROUND: Acute coronary syndromes arise from coronary atherosclerosis with superimposed thrombosis. Since factor Xa plays a central role in thrombosis, the inhibition of factor Xa with low-dose rivaroxaban might improve cardiovascular outcomes in patients with a recent acute coronary syndrome. METHODS: In this double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, we randomly assigned 15,526 patients with a recent acute coronary syndrome to receive twice-daily doses of either 2.5 mg or 5 mg of rivaroxaban or placebo for a mean of 13 months and up to 31 months. The primary efficacy end point was a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, or stroke. RESULTS: Rivaroxaban significantly reduced the primary efficacy end point, as compared with placebo, with respective rates of 8.9% and 10.7% (hazard ratio in the rivaroxaban group, 0.84; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.74 to 0.96; P=0.008), with significant improvement for both the twice-daily 2.5-mg dose (9.1% vs. 10.7%, P=0.02) and the twice-daily 5-mg dose (8.8% vs. 10.7%, P=0.03). The twice-daily 2.5-mg dose of rivaroxaban reduced the rates of death from cardiovascular causes (2.7% vs. 4.1%, P=0.002) and from any cause (2.9% vs. 4.5%, P=0.002), a survival benefit that was not seen with the twice-daily 5-mg dose. As compared with placebo, rivaroxaban increased the rates of major bleeding not related to coronary-artery bypass grafting (2.1% vs. 0.6%, P

Hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBO) could transiently reverse hypoxia during acute myocardial infarction (AMI). In order to evaluate whether early HBO can identify viable segments after AMI, improvement of wall motion score index (WMSI) after HBO was compared to dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE). Thirty-one patients with first AMI treated with thrombolysis received 100% oxygen at 2 technical atmospheres for 1 h within 24 h of the onset of chest pain. All patients underwent echocardiography before and after HBO and during DSE. Improvements in WMSI after HBO, as well as during DSE were considered as proof of viability. Total of 186 akinetic segments were detected before HBO. Functional recovery was defined at 73 after HBO and 113 segments were fixed. Eighty-one segments improved contraction with DSE. WMSI improved before HBO compared to the one after HBO (1.79 vs. 1.65, p = 0.024) and DSE (1.79 vs. 1.60, p0.001). Close relationship between WMSI after HBO and DSE was found (r = 0.417, p = 0.022). Sensitivity and specificity of HBO for viability were 73% and 85%, respectively. HBO may identify viable myocardium as early as day one after AMI. The highest number of responding segments was detected in patients who received HBO within shortest intervals following the onset of chest pain.