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The automatic delineation of organs at risk (OARs) can help doctors make radiotherapy plans efficiently and accurately, and effectively improve the accuracy of radiotherapy and the therapeutic effect. Therefore, this study aims to propose an automatic delineation method for OARs in cervical cancer scenarios of both after-loading and external irradiation. At the same time, the similarity of OARs structure between different scenes is used to improve the segmentation accuracy of OARs in difficult segmentations.Our ensemble model adopted the strategy of ensemble learning. The model obtained from the pre-training based on the after-loading and external irradiation was introduced into the integrated model as a feature extraction module. The data in different scenes were trained alternately, and the personalized features of the OARs within the model and the common features of the OARs between scenes were introduced. Computer tomography (CT) images for 84 cases of after-loading and 46 cases of external irradiation were collected as the train data set. Five-fold cross-validation was adopted to split training sets and test sets. The five-fold average dice similarity coefficient (DSC) served as the figure-of-merit in evaluating the segmentation model.The DSCs of the OARs (the rectum and bladder in the after-loading images and the bladder in the external irradiation images) were higher than 0.7. Compared with using an independent residual U-net (convolutional networks for biomedical image segmentation) model [residual U-net (Res-Unet)] delineate OARs, the proposed model can effectively improve the segmentation performance of difficult OARs (the sigmoid in the after-loading CT images and the rectum in the external irradiation images), and the DSCs were increased by more than 3%.Comparing to the dedicated models, our ensemble model achieves the comparable result in segmentation of OARs for different treatment options in cervical cancer radiotherapy, which may be shorten time for doctors to sketch OARs and improve doctor's work efficiency.

Polyethylene microplastics (PE-MPs) and glyphosate (GLY) occur widely and have toxic characteristics, resulting in increased research interest. In this study, common carp were used to assess the individual and combined toxicity of PE-MPs (0, 1.5, or 4.5 mg/L) and GLY (0, 5, or 15 mg/L) on the brain-gut axis. After 60 days of exposure, the developmental toxicity, blood-brain barrier (BBB), locomotor behavior, intestinal barrier (physical barrier, chemical barrier, microbial barrier), and intestinal content metabolism of common carp were evaluated. Results showed that 15 mg/L of GLY exposure significantly reduced the mRNA expression of tight-junction genes (occludin, claudin-2, and ZO-1) in the brain, and acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity was clearly inhibited by high concentrations of GLY. However, different concentrations of PE-MPs had no significant effect on the activity of AChE. Furthermore, the free-swimming behavior of common carp was distinctly inhibited by treatment with a combination of 15 mg/L GLY and 4.5 mg/L PE-MPs. Histological studies indicated that PE-MPs alone and in combination with GLY could disrupt the physical and chemical intestinal barriers of common carp. Additionally, the abundance and diversity of gut microbiota in common carp were significantly changed when exposed to a combination of PE-MPs and GLY. Metabolomics further revealed that PE-MPs combined with GLY triggered metabolic changes and that differential metabolites were related to amino acid and lipid metabolism. These findings illustrate that exposure to PE-MPs or GLY alone is toxic to fish and results in physiological changes to the brain-gut axis. This work offers a robust analysis to understand the mechanisms underlying GLY and MP-induced aquatic toxicity.

PURPOSE This study aimed to improve the accuracy of the hippocampus segmentation through multitask edge-aware learning. METHOD We developed a multitask framework for computerized hippocampus segmentation. We used three-dimensional (3D) U-net as our backbone model with two training objectives: (a) to minimize the difference between the targeted binary mask and the model prediction; and (b) to optimize an auxiliary edge-prediction task which is designed to guide the model detection of the weak boundary of the hippocampus in model optimization. To balance the multiple task objectives, we proposed an improved gradient normalization by adaptively adjusting the weight of losses from different tasks. A total of 247 T1-weighted MRIs including 131 without contrast and 116 with contrast were collected from 247 patients to train and validate the proposed method. Segmentation was quantitatively evaluated with the dice coefficient (Dice), Hausdorff distance (HD), and average Hausdorff distance (AVD). The 3D U-net was used for baseline comparison. We used a Wilcoxon signed-rank test to compare repeated measurements (Dice, HD, and AVD) by different segmentations. RESULTS Through fivefold cross-validation, our multitask edge-aware learning achieved Dice of 0.8483 ± 0.0036, HD of 7.5706 ± 1.2330 mm, and AVD of 0.1522 ± 0.0165 mm, respectively. Conversely, the baseline results were 0.8340 ± 0.0072, 10.4631 ± 2.3736 mm, and 0.1884 ± 0.0286 mm, respectively. With a Wilcoxon signed-rank test, we found that the differences between our method and the baseline were statistically significant (P

In the present paper, we report results on the impact of thermal shock cycles on mechanical properties and microstructure of lithium disilicate dental glass-ceramic relevant to the production process. A distinct reduction of the bending strength is observed after suffering more than five thermal shock cycles. The crystal, morphological and atomic structural characteristics before and after the thermal shock were detected by X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy and field-emission scanning electron microscopy. Furthermore, theoretical calculations, based on density functional theory, were performed on models for the distorted and undistorted lithium disilicate crystal lattices. We show that the morphological and mechanical changes can be attributed primarily to the distortion of the Si-O-Si structural unit of the lithium disilicate glass-ceramic.

In plants, stomatal movements are tightly controlled by changes in cellular turgor pressure. Carbohydrates produced by glycolysis and the tricarboxylic acid cycle play an important role in regulating turgor pressure. Here, we describe an Arabidopsis mutant, bzu1, isolated in a screen for elevated leaf temperature in response to drought stress, which displays smaller stomatal pores and higher drought resistance than wild-type plants. BZU1 encodes a known acetyl-coenzyme A synthetase, ACN1, which acts in the first step of a metabolic pathway converting acetate to malate in peroxisomes. We showed that BZU1/ACN1-mediated acetate-to-malate conversion provides a shunt that plays an important role in osmoregulation of stomatal turgor. We found that the smaller stomatal pores in the bzu1 mutant are a consequence of reduced accumulation of malate, which acts as an osmoticum and/or a signaling molecule in the control of turgor pressure within guard cells, and these results provided new genetic evidence for malate-regulated stomatal movement. Collectively, our results indicate that a peroxisomal BZU1/ACN1-mediated acetate–malate shunt regulates drought resistance by controlling the turgor pressure of guard cells in Arabidopsis.

Inspired by flagellate microorganisms in nature, the microhelix is considered as an ideal model for transportation in fluid environment with low Reynolds number. However, how to promote the swimming and loading capabilities of microhelices with controllable geometries remains challenging. In this study, a novel kind of conical hollow microhelices is proposed and a method is developed to rapidly fabricate these microhelices with controllable parameters by femtosecond vortex beams generated from spatial light modulation along helical scanning. Conical hollow microhelices with designable heights (H = 45-75 µm), diameters (D = 6-18 µm), pitch numbers (Pi = 2-4), taper angles (T = 0.1-0.6 rad), and pitch periods (ΔP = 10-30 µm) are efficiently fabricated. In addition, compared with straight microhelices, the forward swimming capability of conical microhelices increases by 50% and the lateral drift of the conical hollow microhelices is reduced by 70%. Finally, the capabilities of these conical hollow microhelices for nanocargo loading and release by the inner hollow core, as well as transportation of neural stem cells by the outer surface are demonstrated. This work provides new insights into faster and simultaneous transportation of multicargoes for hybrid drug delivery, targeted therapy, and noninvasive surgery in vivo.

In this Letter, parallel writing of silver microwire (AgMW) arrays based on femtosecond laser multiphoton reduction (MPR) is realized by modulating a femtosecond laser beam into a multifoci pattern with a spatial light modulator (SLM). Arbitrarily distributed multifoci are generated with predesigned holograms loaded on a SLM for MPR. The experimental parameters for the desired fabrication of AgMWs with multifoci are systematically investigated and optimized. On this basis, different AgMW patterns are dynamically and simultaneously fabricated by loading different holograms onto a high-frequency refreshed SLM in sequence. The quantity and distribution of multifoci can be controlled dynamically by the SLM in the fabrication process, and even the intensity of individual focus is dynamically modulated by the control of the gray level of holograms. Finally, the potential application of this flexible and rapid AgMW fabrication method in microheater fabrication is demonstrated. The microheaters exhibit a controllable temperature gradient after energized.

Microfabrication by using structured laser beams provides a rapid and facile way for creating some specific microstructures. As an important member in the structured beam category, optical vortices can be easily generated by a helical phase and focused into a geometry-tunable pattern by an objective. In this work, optical vortices with diverse intensity distributions, e.g., different sizes, geometries, and deflection angles, are generated by controlling the phase factors imprinted on optical vortices, including topological charge, fold number, and modulation depth, respectively. The focusing properties of the measured optical vortices in a high numerical aperture laser microfabrication system agree with the theoretical calculation by the Debye vectorial diffraction theory. Three dimensional complex microtubes are rapidly realized by simply scanning the optical vortices along a designed route in a photoresist. With this method, microtubes with controlled diameters, polygonal geometry, winding edges, and ev...

In this Letter, superposed Bessel beams (SBBs) are realized by alternatively imprinting holograms of opposite-order Bessel beams along the radial direction on a spatial light modulator. The propagation invariance and non-rotation properties of SBBs are theoretically predicted and experimentally demonstrated. The focusing property of SBBs with a high numerical aperture (NA) objective is investigated with the Debye vectorial diffraction theory. Near the focal plane, a circularly distributed multiple foci pattern is achieved. The multiple foci generated from SBBs are adopted in a two-photon fabrication system, and micropattern fabrication by a single exposure is demonstrated. Facile fabrication of three-dimensional microstructures with SBBs is realized by dynamically controlling the number of focal spots, and the diameter and rotation of the focal pattern.

This paper introduced the key points in fabricating anterior esthetic restorations with all ceramic materials, including pre-operative smile design, standard tooth preparation, provisional restoration fabrication, all ceramic materials selection, all ceramic restoration bonding, ceramic crack and fracture prevention. And then, the authors summarized and reviewed the clinical common problems in anterior esthetic restorations.