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Dystonia is a movement disorder characterized by involuntary muscle contractions. Patients with dystonia may experience uncontrollable twisting, repetitive movements, or abnormal posture. A 55-year-old man presented with an involuntary left forearm supination, which he had experienced for five years. There was no history of antecedent trauma to the wrist or elbow. Although conventional therapeutic modalities had been performed, the symptoms persisted. When he visited our hospital, electromyography was performed. Reduced conduction velocity was evident at the elbow-axilla segment of the left median nerve. We suspected that there was a problem on the median nerve between the elbow and the axilla. For this reason, we performed an ultrasonography and magnetic resonance imaging study. A spindle-shaped soft tissue mass was observed at the left median nerve that suggested the possibility of neurofibroma. Dystonia caused by traumatic or compressive peripheral nerve injury has often been reported, but focal dystonia due to a neurogenic tumor is extremely rare. Here, we report our case with a review of the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the design, characterization, and validation of an optimized simultaneous color and near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence rigid endoscopic imaging system for minimally invasive surgery. This system is optimized for illumination and collection of NIR wavelengths allowing the simultaneous acquisition of both color and NIR fluorescence at frame rates higher than 6.8 fps with high sensitivity. The system employs a custom 10-mm diameter rigid endoscope optimized for NIR transmission. A dual-channel light source compatible with the constraints of an endoscope was built and includes a plasma source for white light illumination and NIR laser diodes for fluorescence excitation. A prism-based 2-CCD camera was customized for simultaneous color and NIR detection with a highly efficient filtration scheme for fluorescence imaging of both 700- and 800-nm emission dyes. The performance characterization studies indicate that the endoscope can efficiently detect fluorescence signal from both indocyanine green and methylene blue in dimethyl sulfoxide at the concentrations of 100 to 185 nM depending on the background optical properties. Finally, we performed the validation of this imaging system in vivo during a minimally invasive procedure for thoracic sentinel lymph node mapping in a porcine model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hemangioma can arise in the soft tissues and bone of the nasal cavity. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no prior case reports presenting intraosseous hemangioma of the nasal septum. Intraosseous hemangioma, in addition to a chondroid tumor, should be included in the differential diagnosis of a calcified mass of the nasal cavity. In the present report, we present a case of an intraosseous cavernous hemangioma in the nasal bony septum of a 53-year-old woman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a Bayesian inverse problem arising in the context of resin transfer molding (RTM), which is a process commonly used for the manufacturing of fiber-reinforced composite materials. The forward model is described by a moving boundary problem in a porous medium. During the injection of resin in RTM, our aim is to update, on the fly, our probabilistic knowledge of the permeability of the material as soon as pressure measurements and observations of the resin moving domain become available. A probabilistic on-the-fly characterisation of the material permeability via the inversion of those measurements/observations is crucial for optimal real-time control aimed at minimising both process duration and the risk of defects formation within RTM. We consider both one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) forward models for RTM. Based on the analytical solution for the 1D case, we prove existence of the sequence of posteriors that arise from a sequential Bayesian formulation within the infinite-dimensional framework. For the numerical characterisation of the Bayesian posteriors in the 1D case, we investigate the application of a fully-Bayesian sequential Monte Carlo method (SMC) for high-dimensional inverse problems. By means of SMC we construct a benchmark against which we compare performance of a novel regularizing ensemble Kalman algorithm (REnKA) that we propose to approximate the posteriors in a computationally efficient manner under practical scenarios. We investigate the robustness of the proposed REnKA with respect to tuneable parameters and computational cost. We demonstrate advantages of REnKA compared with SMC with a small number of particles. We further investigate, in both the 1D and 2D settings, practical aspects of REnKA relevant to RTM, which include the effect of pressure sensors configuration and the observational noise level in the uncertainty in the log-permeability quantified via the sequence of Bayesian posteriors. The results of this work are also useful for other applications than RTM, which can be modelled by a random moving boundary problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the effect of the electron cyclotron (EC) beam width on the full suppression time of neoclassical tearing mode (NTM) using the finite difference method (FDM) based minimum seeking controller in ITER. An integrated numerical system is setup for time-dependent simulations of the NTM evolution in ITER by solving the modified Rutherford equation together with the plasma equilibrium, transport, and EC heating and current drive. The calculated magnetic island width and growth rate is converted to the Mirnov diagnostic signal as an input to the controller to mimic the real experiment. In addition, 10% of the noise is enforced to this diagnostic signal to evaluate the robustness of the controller. To test the dependency of the NTM stabilization time on the EC beam width, the EC beam width scan is performed for a perfectly aligned case first, then for cases with the feedback control using the minimum seeking controller. When the EC beam is perfectly aligned, the narrower the EC beam width, the smaller the NTM stabilization time is observed. As the beam width increases, the required EC power increases exponentially. On the other hand, when the minimum seeking controller is applied, NTM stabilization sometimes fails as the EC beam width decreases. This is consistently observed in the simulation with various representations of the noise as well as without the noise in the Mirnov signal. The higher relative misalignment, misalignment divided by the beam width, is found to be the reason for the failure with the narrower beam widths. The EC stabilization effect can be lower for the narrower beam widths than the broader ones even at the same misalignment due to the smaller ECCD at the island O-point. On the other hand, if the EC beam is too wide, the NTM stabilization time takes too long. Accordingly, the optimal EC beam width range is revealed to exist in the feedback stabilization of NTM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which explores the stretchable PPG sensor with light polarization for physical activity–permissible monitoring. It mentions that skin-attachable sensors, which represent the ultimate form of wearable electronic devices that ensure conformal contact with skin, suffer from motion artifact limitations owing to relative changes in position between the sensor and skin during physical activities.