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The prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with portal vein tumor thrombosis (PVTT) is dismal. Despite best treatment and care, the patients with this malignancy only showed 2.7-4 months of overall survival. It is debatable whether liver transplantation helps PVTT sufferers. The effectiveness of radiation therapy in treating HCC patients with PVTT should not be undervalued. By limiting the high dosage region to a small planning target volume, stereotactic radiation delivery has shifted toward hypofractionation, limiting the radiation exposure to healthy organs and tissues. Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) has a local control rate of 75-100%, depending on the treatment. The major limitation in SBRT for hepatocellular carcinoma with PVTT is the paucity of prospective evidence for longer periods beyond the first two years after treatment. More prospective studies/randomized clinical trials with a longer follow-up, larger sample size, and adequate statistical power are the dire need of the present situation to ascertain the curative effect of SBRT as primary therapy for advanced HCC with PVTT.SBRT can improve survival, particularly for patients receiving multidisciplinary treatment. This review sums up our most current understanding of how radiation therapy, notably SBRT, can be used to treat hepatocellular carcinoma when combined with PVTT. Recent research has led us to believe that irradiation in the form of SBRT may cure hepatocellular carcinoma complicated by PVTT.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) has been an area of growing concern and posing threat to human health worldwide. The treatment has been defined for all types of DR-TB with or without newer anti-TB drugs. multi-DR-TB (MDR-TB) patients have now choice of two types of regimen, shorter and longer regimens. Shorter regimen for treatment of subset of MDR-TB patients who have not been previously treated with second line drugs and in whom resistance to fluoroquinolones and second-line injectable agents has been excluded is given for 9 to 11 months. A longer regimen of at least five effective anti-TB drugs (ATDs) during the intensive phase is recommended, including pyrazinamide and four core second-line ATDs. Intensive phase, including injectables, should be given for at least 8 months. The total duration of treatment is at least 20 months, which can be prolonged up to 24 months depending on the response of the patient. World Health Organization (WHO) has recently revised the grouping of ATD for use in DR-TB patients in 2018 into three groups based on individual patient data meta-analysis depending on their individual efficacy, risk of relapse, treatment failure, and death. Recently, an all oral longer regimen comprising bedaquiline, pretomanid, and linezolid (BPal regime) for 6 to 9 months for extensive-DR-TB (XDR-TB) patients and those MDR-TB patients who cannot tolerate or do not respond to conventional MDR-TB regimen. These new developments will be a step forward toward establishing universal regimen to treat all types of DR-TB. This article has summarized the current evidence from literature search to date, including prevalence of DR-TB, types of regimen used and the advancement in the regimens for effective treatment of DR-TB patients.

Visual tracking requirement is increasing day by day due to the availability of high-performance digital cameras at low prices. Visual tracking becomes a complex problem when cameras suffer with unwanted and unintentional motion, resulting in motion-blurred unstabilized video. The problem in hand becomes more challenging when the target of interest is to be detected automatically in this unstabilized video. This paper presents a comprehensive single intelligent solution for these problems. The proposed algorithm auto-detects the camera motion, filters out the unintentional motion while stabilizing the video keeping intentional motion only using speeded-up robust features (SURF) technique. Motion smear due to unstabilization is also removed, providing sharp stabilized video output with video quality enhancement of up to 20dB. Gabor filter is used innovatively for auto-detection of target of interest in each stabilized frame. Then the target is tracked using SURF method.

Most of the methods used nowadays for learning bilingual word embeddings are dependent on vast parallel corpora or dictionaries, which is rather tough to cover for many languages, and when it comes to Indian languages, the language pairs not unavailable most of the times. With modern-day natural language processing algorithms, we can surpass this hurdle, with a notion of convolutional neural nets. To surpass this requirement, a simple self-learning approach has been adopted in this paper, which diminishes the requirement of document aligned corpora for languages under test. The approach of this paper is to reduce the use of bilingual resources for mapping and device a own learning technique that can relate with a dictionary relied mapping algorithm. The system can work with as less as 30-word pairs and still perform at par with the algorithms using richer sources of bilingual data.

Introduction: Allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) is a severe allergic inflammatory response to Aspergillus fumigatus and is often an unrecognized cause for bronchiectasis. Aims and Objectives: In this study, we aim to examine the burden of ABPA in the India bronchiectasis registry, the screening test perform and the phenotype characterization. Material and Methods: Among the 2197 cases of bronchiectasis enrolled in the Indian bronchiectasis registry, we examined the number of patients screened for ABPA and the proportion of screened positive ABPA cases. We also looked for phenotypic characterization using HRCT features, total IgE, eosinophil count, IgE and IgG specific to aspergillus and by skin prick test. Results: Out of 2197 cases of bronchiectasis cases register at 31 sites, only 387 (17%) cases were screened for ABPA 190 (49.1%) at 24 sites. Among these 190 cases, 99(52.1%) of all ABPA cases were male (mean age 44.85 ± 15.09 yr). 62.03% had the bronchiectasis for more than five years. Serum eosinophil count was raised in 115(60.5%) out of 146 (76.84%) cases. Raised IgG level was observed in 71 (74.74%) out of 95 (50%) cases. Specific IgE to aspergillus was raised in 117 (84.17%) out of 139 (73.16%) cases. Aspergillus skin prick test was tested positive in 83 (83%) out of 100 (52.63%) cases. Total IgE count was raised in 97 (54.19%) cases out of 179 (94.2%). Obstructive airways disease was found in 74 (52.5%) out of 141 (74.21%) cases tested by spirometry. The right middle lobe was involved in 66.32% cases in HRCT. Conclusion: Despite the universal screening for ABPA recommended by the ERS, only 17% were screened for ABPA of which 50% showed evidence of underline ABPA.

Visual tracking is a prime requirement for any intelligent surveillance. The problem becomes more challenging when target of interest is to be auto-detected. Several algorithms have been developed for auto target detection and tracking, but most of the algorithms are not realizable for real-time applications due to high computational cost and lack of robustness. A number of false alarms are detected, or tracking window is lost during the tracking operation for these algorithms. A novel approach is developed in the proposed algorithm, which auto-detects the target of interest using weighted modified Gabor filtering followed by tracking using speeded-up robust features (SURFs). The combination of Gabor and SURF provides robustness and fast computation. The proposed algorithm is based on strong feature descriptors; hence, it is very robust and independent of illumination variation.

Introduction: Bronchiectasis is a heterogeneous disease. Previous phenotyping of this disease has been based solely on 5 European databases which do not really account for the remaining world population. Aims and Objectives: This study looked at the Indian EMBARC Registry to try and identify discrete patient groups with different clinical and biological characteristics. Methodology: Principal component and cluster analyses were performed using demographics, co-morbidities, clinical, radiological, physiological and microbiological variables collected during the stable disease state. Results: The data from 1368 prospectively enrolled outpatients from 33 centres in India from the EMBARC India Registry were included for the cluster analysis. Among these patients (mean age 54 years, 60% men) six clusters were identified. Our clusters were driven by patient demographics (age and sex), BMI (median BMI 21.48), aetiology of Bronchiectasis (Idiopathic 22.9%, post TB 34.3%, Post infectious 21.3%, ABPA 9.9%) Lung function (mean FEV1 53.36%, FVC 63.71%). Patients in the six clusters showed significant differences in terms of quality of life, exacerbations and hospitalisations. This is in complete contrast to the European cohort where four clusters were identified driven by the presence of chronic infection with Pseudomonas Aeruginosa or other pathogens and daily sputum production. Conclusion: Hence this is the first effort to define discrete phenotypes of Bronchiectasis patients in an Asian population. Identification of six clinical phenotypes in Bronchiectasis could favour focused treatments in future interventional studies designed to alter the natural history of the disease.

Introduction and Methods: The European Multicenter Bronchiectasis Audit and Research Collaboration (EMBARC) network established across 23 European countries was extended to India to explore unique features of Non-cystic fibrosis Bronchiectasis in this sub-continent. 34 investigator sites located across different parts of India contributed to 2062 cases of Non-CF Bronchiectasis, of which post-tuberculosis lung disease was identified as the biggest risk factor contributing to 34.7% (N=717) cases. The aim of this study was to describe the unique features of Post-TB Bronchiectasis observed on HRCT in this Indian cohort. Results: The mean (± SD) age of the 717 cases of Post-TB Bronchiectasis was 54.9 ± 14 yrs with a M:F ratio of 60:40. The location of Bronchiectasis was 71% (67.7,74.3) in the upper lobes, 66% (62.5,69.5) in the middle lobe/lingula and 60% (56.4,63.6) in the lower lobes. The cystic type was the most common 56% (53.1,60.4), followed by cylindrical 46% (42.3,49.6) and varicose 8.9% (6.8,10.9). More than 43.8% had bilateral disease. 13.6% (11.3,16.3) of the cases presented with hemoptysis that required hospitalization. Sputum microbiological samples collected in 39.8% of the cases isolated Pseudomonas in 17.1% during stable disease and 18.9% during exacerbations, while Klebsiella was isolated in 4.5% and 16.0% of cases respectively. Myco TB was isolated in the sputum in 5% of cases. 39.5% of the subjects had FEV1/FVC values Conclusion: Post TB lung disease is the commonest cause for Non CF Bronchiectasis in India and presents with unique features that are distinct from those reported in the western world.

This article covers optical power measurement of light signal in DWDM network and debugging of optical power as per the specifications of DWDM system with fix gain amplifier. The measurement and calculations of each component of DWDM system is discussed individually. Optical power of individual optical channel, aggregate optical power of multiplexed signals, relation with amplifier gain, insertion loss and attenuation on signal are the key factors involved in design and operation of DWDM system. From transmitter to receiver, the working performance of the DWDM system depends on the optical strength of input light signal should be as per specifications of its components. A description of input and output optical power of light signal of each DWDM component and its relationship is discussed. If there is any deviation as per specifications is observed, process to calculate deviation and debug is given with working example in this article.

Objective: To compare continuous thoracic epidural analgesia (TEA) and paravertebral block (PVB) for postoperative analgesia in patients undergoing minimally invasive direct coronary artery bypass (MIDCAB) surgery for quality of analgesia, complications, compliance to chest physiotherapy, hemodynamics, and respiratory effects. Design: Prospective, randomized study. Setting: Specialty research hospital. Participants: Forty-one consenting patients undergoing MIDCAB surgery. Interventions: Patients in the TEA group had an epidural catheter inserted at the T4-5 interspace, whereas patients in the PVB group had a catheter inserted in the paravertebral space on the left side at the T4-5 level. Measurements and Main Results: Parameters evaluated included visual analog scale pain scores at rest and while coughing, supplemental analgesic requirement, complications, hemodynamics, and respiratory parameters. Measurements were made at 2-hour intervals for 12 hours beginning at 10 minutes after endotracheal extubation. There was no statistically significant difference in visual analog scale scores and requirement of supplemental analgesia between the 2 groups. Cardiac index at 4 hours and 6 hours was significantly higher in the TEA group. Patients in the PVB group had significantly lower respiratory rates at 8, 10, and 12 hours. All other parameters were comparable. In 1 patient, the epidural space could not be catheterized. One patient in the TEA group had transient hypotension, and 1 patient complained of backache at the site of the epidural catheter insertion. Conclusion: PVB is as effective as TEA for postoperative analgesia after MIDCAB surgery. PVB is technically easier than TEA and may be safer than TEA because no complications were seen in the PVB group. Copyright © 2001 by W.B. Saunders Company