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A 18 year girl presented with an asymptomatic solitary nodule on the lateral aspect of the right below. Biopsy proved it to be Pilomatricoma. The lesion was excised. Pilomatricoma is rare, benign tumour commonly occurring on the face and extremities and composed of cells resembling those of hair matrix, which undergo ‘mummification†and may calcify.

Word searching or keyword spotting is an important research problem in the domain of document image processing. The solution to the said problem for handwritten documents is more challenging than for printed ones. In this work, a two-stage word searching schema is introduced. In the first stage, all the irrelevant words with respect to a search word are filtered out from the document page image. This is carried out using a zonal feature vector, called pre-selection feature vector, along with a rule-based binary classification method. In the next step, a holistic word recognition paradigm is used to confirm a pre-selected word as search word. To accomplish this, a modified histogram of oriented gradients-based feature descriptor is combined with a topological feature vector. This method is experimented on a QUWI English database, which is freely available through the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition 2015 competition entitled “Writer Identification and Gender Classification.” This technique not only provides good retrieval performance in terms of recall, precision, and F-measure scores, but it also outperforms some state-of-the-art methods.

Handwritten words can never complement printed words because the former are mostly written in either skewed or slanted form or in both. This very nature of handwriting adds a huge overhead when converting word images into machine-editable format through an optical character recognition system. Therefore, slope and slant corrections are considered as the fundamental pre-processing tasks in handwritten word recognition. For solving this, researchers have followed a two-pass approach where the slope of the word is corrected first and then slant correction is carried out subsequently, thus making the system computationally expensive. To address this issue, we propose a novel one-pass method, based on fitting an oblique ellipse over the word images, to estimate both the slope and slant angles of the same. Furthermore, we have developed three databases considering word images of three popular scripts used in India, namely Bangla, Devanagari, and Roman, along with ground truth information. The experimental results revealed the effectiveness of the proposed method over some state-of-the-art methods used for the aforementioned problem.

Abstract: Our paper computationally explores the extinction dynamics of an animal species effected by a sudden spike in mortality due to an extreme event. In our study, the animal species has a 2-stage life cycle and is endowed with a high survival probability under normal circumstances. Our proposed approach does not involve any restraining assumptions concerning environmental variables or predator–prey relationships. Rather it is based on the simple premise that if observed on an year-to-year basis, the population size will be noted to either have gone up or come down as compared to last year. The conceptualization is borrowed from the theory of asset pricing in stochastic finance. The survival probability (λ) is set at unity i.e. the model assumes that all young members of the population mature into adults capable of reproduction. As we bias our model heavily in favor of survival, the chance of the population size increasing over time is much higher than it suffering a decline, if no extreme events occur. One of the critical parameters in our simulation model is the shock size i.e. the number of immediate mortalities that may be caused by an extreme event. We run our model for two pre-selected fecundity levels denoted as “high” and “low”. Under each of the two fecundity levels one hundred independent simulation runs are conducted over a time period of ten stages (i.e. five generations) and the relevant descriptive statistics are reported for the terminal (i.e. the fifth) generation. Shock sizes are varied until at least one scenario of total extinction is observed in the simulation output. Any extinctions occurring in t 0 are treated as “trivial cases” and not counted. Our results indicate that an extreme event with a minimum shock size exceeding 2/3 the size of the pristine population can potentially drive animal species with 2-stage life cycles to extinction for both “low” and “high” fecundity levels. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, a novel approach for word extraction and character segmentation from the handwritten Bangla document images is reported. At first, a modified Run Length Smoothing Algorithm (RLSA), called Spiral Run Length Smearing Algorithm (SRLSA), is applied for the extraction of words from the text lines of unconstrained handwritten Bangla document images. This technique has helped to overcome some of the drawbacks of standard horizontal and vertical RLSA techniques. SRLSA technique has been applied on the Bangla handwritten document image database CMATERdb1.1.1 and the success rate of the word extraction is found to be 86.01%. In the second part of the work, we have presented a useful solution to the problem on how best word images of handwritten Bangla script can be segmented into constituent characters. Moreover, the technique can segment the words having discontinuity in Matra, a prominent feature of Bangla script. It also optimizes the trade-off between under/over segmentation as Matra region and segmentation points are estimated more precisely. As a result, better word segmentation accuracy is achieved with minimal data loss. Here, a success rate of 92.48% is observed on a dataset of 750 handwritten Bangla words which is 3.35% higher than that of our earlier techniques.

Seven (7) cases of depressed facial scars which included depressed distensile acne scars, depressed bound down scars of acne excluding deep ice pick scars, and scars of varicella constituted the study group. The scars were treated with a new method named subcuticular undermining. A tri-bevelled hypodermic needle was inserted through a puncture in the skin surface and its sharp edges were manouevered under the scar. The depression was lifted by the releasing action of the needle maneuevere and from connective tissue that forms in course of normal wound healing. Approximately 50% to 80% improvement of all the scars were noticed. Patientâ€s compliance was highly satisfactory. Subcision is an appropriate, option in depressed scars of black skin (Type IV-Type VI) where dermabrasion and medium-depth and deep chemical peeling are contraindicated.

Surgical replacements of stable vitiligo with pigmented skin is an effective alternative for patients. But none of them is fully dependable as they induce satisfactory repigmentation with some drawbacks. One such is the occasional depigmentation of the minigrafts. Split thickness skin grafting (STSG) has been tried in cases not responding to autologous miniature punch grafts. A series of 7 patients with 10 localised, stable, refractory and minigraft-failure patches was treated institutionally by dermabrasion and STSG and followed up for 16 months. The graft take was 100% in 7 patches and 90% in the remaining 3 and 100% repigmentation was achieved in 4 cases, 95% in 2 cases and 90% in 1. Time taken for satisfactory colour match varied 4.5 to 8.5 months. Complications were minor and did not affect the results. Stable and refractory patches of vitiligo, not responding to autologous miniature punch grafts, can be treated by STSG with good to excellent repigmentation.

Vitiligo is a hypomelanotic disorder often difficult to treat. Different medicinal treatments such as PUNA, steroids and adjunct theraples give partial or complete repigmentation in about 60-90% cases. Moreover, vitiligo patches which are refractory to most medical therapies are acrofacial, mucosal and segmental. At the backdrop of these medicinal shortcomings, various surgical procedures and their modifications have gradually evolved. To decide why, where and when surgical interference is required, is of utmost importance. In this review different surgical modes, including some of the latest, and their future prospects are discussed.

Lichen striatus is an uncommon, self-limited, usually unilateral linear dermatosis of unknown aetiology. The lesions in two cases of lichen striatus, one on right cheek of a 7 year old boy for last 5 months and another on left arm of a 10 year old boy for last 3 months, exactly follow the pigmentary dermarcation lines: one, Pigmentary demarcation lines over the face (PDL-F) and the other Voigt-Futcher line (PDL-A). This observation might link between the linearity of lichen striatus and pigmentary demarcation lines.

Fourteen patients, 8 girls and 6 boys with trachyonychia have been reported. Their ages ranged from 5 to12 years; mean 8.5 years. All of them had retarded growth of nail plates with roughness. Fragility blackish discoloration, longitudinal ridging of all the 20 nails of fingers and toes. Six patients had thickening of the nail plates while 8 had thinning. In one patient each oil drop sign and splinter haemorrhages were seen; two patients each had associated lichen planus and psoriasis and one each atopic dermatitis, vitiligo and alopecia areata. Personal history of atopy was obtained in 6 patients. Nail biopsy carried out in 5 patients revealed nonspecific histology. Radiological examination of fingers and toes revealed no bony or joint abnormality. The nail changes remained almost static during a 4 year follow-up period.

In this prospective study, sixty patients, 28 male and 32 female aged 7 to 48 (mean 12.5) years, were divided into 3 equal groups. Patients in gr 1 applied 5% doxepin hydrochloride cream over the eczematous lesions twice daily for 2 weeks. Group II patients were treated with clobetasol propionate (0.05%) cream twice daily for 2 weeks. In gr III, the patients received topical clobetasol propionate twice daily for the first week and doxepin hydrochloride cream twice daily for the 2nd week. The improvement was measured by ‘subjective sympom†(SS) and ‘objective sing†(OS) scoring systems. Improvement in SS was maximum in gr III moderate in gr I and mild in gr II. Improvement in OS was maximum in gr III followed by gr II and gr I. Lichenified lesions showed no improvement. Somnolence and stinging at the local site were the adverse effects complained by 8(40%) and 3(15%) patients in gr I respectively, 2(10%) patients had both in gr III.