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Many major diseases can cause changes in the morphology of blood vessels, and the segmentation of retinal blood vessels is of great significance for preventing these diseases. Obtaining complete, continuous, and high-resolution segmentation results is very challenging due to the diverse structures of retinal tissues, the complex spatial structures of blood vessels, and the presence of many small ships. In recent years, deep learning networks like UNet have been widely used in medical image processing. However, the continuous down-sampling operations in UNet can result in the loss of a significant amount of information. Although skip connections between the encoder and decoder can help address this issue, the encoder features still contain a large amount of irrelevant information that cannot be efficiently utilized by the decoder. To alleviate the irrelevant information, this paper proposes a feature selection module between the decoder and encoder that utilizes the self-attention mechanism of transformers to accurately and efficiently select the relevant encoder features for the decoder. Additionally, a lightweight Residual Global Context module is proposed to obtain dense global contextual information and establish dependencies between pixels, which can effectively preserve vascular details and segment small vessels accurately and continuously. Experimental results on three publicly available color fundus image datasets (DRIVE, CHASE, and STARE) demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms existing methods in terms of both performance metrics and visual quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of microelectronics, handheld ultrasound devices emerged and have a widespread use in the field of medicine and healthcare. The handheld ultrasound is a modality of medical ultrasonic device that is portable (i.e., carried by hand), easy to operate and in some cases even combine the scanner with the host system. It normally has the characteristics of light weight, small size and low power consumption. With the wireless imaging transmission technique, remote and intelligent diagnosis is possible for the doctors using handheld ultrasound devices. As soon as the low-cost, highperformance handheld ultrasound device was launched, it attracted clinical attention and received a warm welcome from primary doctors and clinicians, thereby accelerating the development of ultrasonic clinical visualization. In this paper, we will illustrate the status and roles of handheld ultrasound for its clinical settings and applications in the past, current, and future.

Background: Studies on the anti‐wrinkle effects of retinol have been widely reported, but there are few reports on the infraorbital dark circles reducing effects. Objective: To evaluate the efficiency and tolerance of one novel formulation containing supramolecular retinol plus acmella oleracea extract in Chinese urban eye skin. Methods: Thirty‐three women with dark circles and visible fine wrinkles around the eyes, aged 20–45 years, were enrolled and instructed to use the formula for 6 weeks. Instrumental measures and subject assessment were obtained at baseline and at 3‐week intervals. Results: After 6 weeks, Mexameter MX18 results demonstrated a statistically significant 13.8% decrease in MI (melanin index) value, and Colorimeter CL400 results demonstrated a statistically significant 0.5% increase in L* (lightness) value, which proved the efficacy of reducing dark circles. Primos‐Lite data showed that the wrinkles parameters of Ra, the wrinkle area %, and number of the wrinkles under the eyes and crow's feet revealed significant reduction to varying degrees. Cutometer results showed that R2 value increased significantly by 13.0%, indicating the benefits of firmer skin. In addition, subject assessment revealed that at the end of 6 weeks, the eye skin was noticeably improved. Conclusions: By clinical evaluation and subject assessment, the novel formulation containing supramolecular retinol plus acmella oleracea extract can effectively diminish the collective signs of stressed urban eye skin for Chinese female in terms of dark circles, fine wrinkles, and sagging skin with good tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel, rapid and sensitive LC-MS/MS method for the determination of 1- O-Acetylbritannilactone (ABL), a sesquiterpene lactone abundant in Inula britannica, was developed and validated using heteroclitin D as internal standard. Separation was achieved on a reversed phase Hypersil Gold C18 column (50 × 4.6 mm, i.d., 3.0 µm) using isocratic elution with methanol-5 m M ammonium acetate buffer aqueous solution (80:20, v/v) at a flow rate of 0.4 mL/min. Calibration curve was linear ( r > 0.99) in a concentration range of 1.60-800 ng/mL with the lower limit of quantification of 1.60 ng/mL. Intra- and inter-day accuracy and precision were validated by relative error (RE) and relative standard deviation (RSD) values, respectively, which were both less than ±15%. The validated method has been successfully applied to a pharmacokinetic study of ABL in rats. The elimination half-lives were 0.412 ± 0.068, 0.415 ± 0.092 and 0.453 ± 0.071 h after a single intravenous administration of 0.14, 0.42, and 1.26 mg/kg ABL, respectively. The area under the plasma concentration-time curve from time zero to the last quantifiable time point and from time zero to infinity and the plasma concentrations at 2 min were linearly related to the doses tested. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are stable, lipophilic compounds that accumulate in the environment and in the food chain. Though some studies provided evidence that PCBs had adverse effects on reproductive function, most of these results were from in vitro models. Therefore we investigated the effect of Aroclor 1254 (a commercial PCBs mixture) treatments on in vivo maturation and developmental potential of mouse oocytes. In the present study, female ICR mice were treated with different doses (12.5, 25 and 50 mg/kg) of Aroclor 1254 (a commercial PCB mixture) once every 72 hours by intraperitoneal injection for 9 days. After three treatments of Aroclor 1254, the mice were superovulated to collect oocytes one day after the last exposure. The effects of Aroclor 1254 on oocyte maturation, fertilization, and preimplantation embryonic development were investigated. Immunofluorescence-stained oocytes were observed under a confocal microscope to assess the effects of Aroclor 1254 on spindle morphology. Parthenogenic activation and the incidence of cumulus apoptosis in cumulus-oocyte complexes were observed as well. Oocytes exposed to different doses of Aroclor 1254 in vivo were associated with a significant decrease in outgrowth potential, abnormal spindle configurations, and the inhibition of parthenogenetic activation of ovulated oocytes. Furthermore, the incidence of apoptosis in cumulus cells was increased after exposed to Aroclor 1254. These results may provide reference for the treatment of reproductive diseases such as infertility or miscarriage caused by environmental contaminants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Currently, validated biomarkers for assessing hemorrhagic transformation (HT) after intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) are lacking. We aimed to validate a test combining GFAP (glial fibrillary acidic protein) and UCH-L1 (ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase-L1) to indicate the absence of HT after IVT., Methods: We prospectively enrolled consecutive patients with stroke treated with IVT from 16 hospitals. Serum GFAP and UCH-L1 levels were measured 24 hours after IVT. Cases from 1 hospital were randomly assigned to the training (70%) and testing (30%) cohorts for internal validation. The external validation cohort included patients from the other 15 hospitals. Cutoff levels of GFAP and UCH-L1 for assessing the absence of HT were established in the training cohort and subjected to internal and external verification., Results: A total of 1063 patients were included. Both GFAP and UCH-L1 levels were independently associated with HT, infarct volume, and 3-month outcome; levels lower than cutoff (12.6 and 63.1 pg/mL, respectively) excluded patients with HT with a negative predictive value of 98.31% (95% CI, 89.70%-99.91%) and detection sensitivity of 98.08% (95% CI, 88.42%-99.90%) in the training cohort. In the testing and validation cohorts, negative predictive value was 100% (95% CI, 75.93%-100%) and 100% (95% CI, 82.19%-100%), respectively, and the sensitivity was 100% (95% CI, 80.76%-100%) and 100% (95% CI, 77.08%-100%), respectively., Conclusions: Serum GFAP and UCH-L1 levels exhibit high sensitivity and negative predictive value for indicating the absence of HT 24 hours after IVT, which supports their potential role in assessing patients' condition after IVT.

Background: To investigate the correlation between retinal vascular changes and ICA stenosis by measuring retinal vessels using full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) and intelligent image recognition., Methods: This research selected patients who were admitted to the Vascular Surgery Department of Quzhou People's Hospital from January 2018 to December 2020 and were preparing for Carotid Artery Stenting (CAS). Participants were divided into two groups: without ICA stenosis (Group 0) and with ICA stenosis (Group 1). A total of 109 cases were included in the study, with 50 cases in Group 1 and 59 cases in Group 0. Vascular images of superior temporal zone B of the retina were obtained by spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). The edges of retinal vessels were identified by FWHM. Each vessel of all subjects was measured three times with the FWHM, and the average value was taken to obtain the retinal arteriolar lumen diameter (RALD), retinal arteriolar outer diameter (RAOD), retinal venular lumen diameter (RVLD), and retinal venular outer diameter (RVOD),Arterial Wall Thickness (AWT),Venular Wall Thickness (VWT)=(RVOD-RVLD)/2,Arteriovenous Ratio (AVR) = RAOD/RVOD., Results: We found that compared to Group 0, Group 1 had smaller RALD ( P < 0.001) and RAOD ( P < 0.001), and wider RVOD ( P < 0.001), with thicker VWT ( P < 0.001). When compared with the contralateral eye in Group 1, the ipsilateral eye exhibited even smaller RALD,RAOD and AVR ( P < 0.001, P < 0.001, P < 0.001). After CAS, the RALD,RAOD and AVR in Group 1 increased ( P < 0.001, P < 0.001, P < 0.001),while the RVLD and RVOD decreased ( P < 0.05, P < 0.001). Our research reveals a significant correlation between retinal vascular changes and internal ICA stenosis., Conclusion: Utilizing SD-OCT in conjunction with the FWHM,we achieved a non-invasive, intelligent, stable, and precise acquisition of data pertaining to retinal vessels. These findings underscore a significant correlation between alterations in retinal vascular structure and the presence of ICA stenosis, as demonstrated by our research., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Jiang, Liu, Yu, Lu, Zhang and Tong.)