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Region of interest (ROI) plays an important role in medical image analysis. In this paper, a new approach to ROI extraction based on the curve evolution is proposed. Different from the existent method, the proposed approach is efficient both in segmentation results and computational cost. The deforming curve is modeled as a monotonically marching front under a positive speed field, where a region speed function is derived by minimizing the new defined ROI energy, and integrated with the edge-based speed function. The curve evolution model integrating the ROI information has a large propagation range and could even drive the front in low-contrast and narrow thin areas. Moreover, a multi-initial fast marching algorithm, which permits the user to plant several seed curves as the initial front and evolves them simultaneously, is developed to fast implement the numerical solution. Selective planting seed curves could help the local growth and thus may further improve the segmentation results and reduce the computational cost. Experiments by our approach are presented and compared with that of the other methods, which show that the proposed approach could fast extract low-contrast and narrow thin ROI precisely.

The aim of the work was to systematically evaluate the efficacy and safety of Vandetanib in the treatment of advanced medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC). MeSH entries to search for randomized controlled trials and clinical research literature on the application of Vandetanib in the treatment of medullary thyroid cancer from PubMed, Chinese national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI), and Web of Science databases since their establishment until March 2023 were used. In terms of efficacy, the analysis results showed that Vandetanib had a significantly higher objective response rate compared to the control group using placebo (OR=2.13, 95% CI: 1.38, 3.29). In terms of side effects, Vandetanib significantly increases the incidence of hypertension, rash, and diarrhea, and has statistical significance (p+<+0.05). Vandetanib has a better therapeutic effect on MTC, but it also increases the incidence of hypertension, rash, and diarrhea. Attention should be paid to the relief of side effects when using it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is still a big challenge to prepare superhydrophobic anti-icing coatings with long freeze delay performance and high durability. In this work, in different with conventional flexible porous coating, we prepared an asymmetric coating with hierarchical pocket structure by a facile hot-pressing/salt-leaching (BHS) method on a polyacrylate vitrimer polymer with mellability. The asymmetric architecture endowed porous coating with low density and high adhesion strength. The in-situ growth of silica nanoparticles in above porous coating and surface modification generated a superhydrophobic hierarchical pocket structure. As a result, the freezing delay time was drastically increased to 14,400 s at -10°C. Furthermore, owing to hierarchical pocket structure, the coating could maintain its superhydrophobicity and anti-icing performance under water flow impacting at 10 kPa pressure, 30 cycles of sandpaper abrasion, 50 cycles of tape peeling, showing advantageous high durability. By employing the hierarchical porous coating on heat exchangers, the energy consumption was drastically reduced by 93%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]