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Currently, placental maturity staging is mainly based on subjective observation of the physician. To address this issue, a new method is proposed for automatic staging of placental maturity based on B-mode ultrasound images. Due to small variations in the placental images, dense descriptor is utilized in place of the sparse descriptor to boost performance. Dense sampled DAISY descriptor is investigated for the demonstrated scale and translation invariant properties. Moreover, the extracted dense features are encoded by vector locally aggregated descriptor (VLAD) for performance boosting. The experimental results demonstrate an accuracy of 0.874, a sensitivity of 0.996 and a specificity of 0.874 for placental maturity staging. The experimental results also show that the dense features outperform the sparse features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

5 Fluorouracil (5 FU) is a commonly used anti tumor chemotherapeutic drug for cervical carcinoma. However, increased drug resistance may occur following several cycles of 5 FU based chemotherapy. Novel strategies of gene therapy for enhancing the sensitivity of cancer cells to 5 FU chemotherapy have been intensively explored. Human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT)C27 is a newly constructed hTERT C terminal polypeptide that is capable of promoting chromosome end to end fusion during anaphase and inducing telomere dysfunction. In the present study, the effects of hTERTC27 overexpression on 5 FU induced proliferation inhibition and apoptosis were observed. HeLa cells were cultured and transfected with the constructed pcDNA3.1 or pcDNA3.1 hTERTC27 vectors. Expression of hTERTC27 was detected using western blot analysis and was assessed using MTT assays and flow cytometry. The results demonstrated that overexpressed hTERTC27 increased the sensitivity of the HeLa cells to 5 FU and significantly inhibited HeLa cell proliferation with 5 FU treatment. In addition, hTERTC27 overexpression evidently promoted the 5 FU induced apoptosis by increasing the expression of activated caspase 3 and 9 and by downregulating the expression of B cell lymphoma 2. The results suggest that hTERTC27 overexpression is a potential clinical strategy for enhancing the antitumor effect of 5 FU chemotherapy in the treatment of cervical carcinoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The GP2 peptide is derived from the Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor 2 (HER2/nue), a marker protein for breast cancer present in saliva. In this paper we study the temperature dependent behavior of hydrated GP2 at terahertz frequencies and find that the peptide undergoes a dynamic transition between 200 and 220 K. By fitting suitable molecular models to the frequency response we determine the molecular processes involved above and below the transition temperature (TD). In particular, we show that below TD the dynamic transition is dominated by a simple harmonic vibration with a slow and temperature dependent relaxation time constant and that above TD, the dynamic behavior is governed by two oscillators, one of which has a fast and temperature independent relaxation time constant and the other of which is a heavily damped oscillator with a slow and temperature dependent time constant. Furthermore a red shifting of the characteristic frequency of the damped oscillator was observed, confirming the presence of a non-harmonic vibration potential. Our measurements and modeling of GP2 highlight the unique capabilities of THz spectroscopy for protein characterization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Chlamydia trachomatis is the leading cause of sexually transmitted bacterial disease, which may cause significant threats, such as pelvic inflammatory disease and tubal factor infertility, to women if untreated. The pathological mechanisms of chlamydia-induced disease remain largely unknown, but it has been proposed that CPAF, a chlamydia-secreted serine protease, may play major roles in aiding chlamydial infection and contribute to chlamydia pathogenesis during in vivo infection. According to previous results, CPAF targets host immunity by degrading antimicrobial peptides and neutralizing complement activity; however, whether CPAF is involved in chlamydial antigen presentation has never been reported. Methodology: Antigen presentation assay was used to monitor the effects of CPAF on OT1-, OT2-, and chlamydia T cell antigen-mediated antigen presentation. In vitro cell-free degradation assay was used to detect CPAF processing of chlamydia T cell antigens. Results: We found that CPAF preferably inhibits OT2- but not OT1-mediated antigen presentation. CPAF inhibits OT2 antigen presentation by direct proteolytic cleavage in the wild type CPAF, but not enzymatic mutants. Importantly, several previously identified chlamydial T cell antigens were selectively degraded by CPAF when co-incubated in vitro. In addition, specific inhibition T cell antigen presentation by CPAF was correlated with T cell antigen cleavage by CPAF in vitro assay. Conclusions: Our experiments demonstrated that CPAF selectively and specifically degrades chlamydial T cell antigens, which chlamydia may utilize as a novel mechanism for evading host immune responses to promote chlamydia survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) elastography is a non-invasive method for the assessment of liver by measuring liver stiffness. The aim of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of ARFI for the diagnosis of liver fibrosis and to assess impact of steatosis on liver fibrosis stiffness measurement, in rats model of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The rat models were conducted in 59 rats. The right liver lobe was processed and embedded in a fabricated gelatin solution. Liver mechanics were measured using shear wave velocity (SWV) induced by acoustic radiation force. In rats with NAFLD, the diagnostic performance of ARFI elastography in predicting severe fibrosis (F ≥ 3) and cirrhosis (F ≥ 4) had the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROC) of 0.993 and 0.985. Among rats mean SWV values were significantly higher in rats with severe steatosis by histology compared to those mild or without steatosis for F0-F2 fibrosis stages (3.07 versus 2.51 m/s, P = 0.01). ARFI elastography is a promising method for staging hepatic fibrosis with NAFLD in rat models. The presence of severe steatosis is a significant factor for assessing the lower stage of fibrosis.

The accurate recognition of fetal facial standard plane (FFSP) (i.e., axial, coronal and sagittal plane) from ultrasound (US) images is quite essential for routine US examination. Since the labor-intensive and subjective measurement is too time-consuming and unreliable, the development of the automatic FFSP recognition method is highly desirable. Different from the previous methods, we leverage a general framework to recognize the FFSP from US images automatically. Specifically, instead of using the previous hand-crafted visual features, we utilize the recent developed deep learning approach via very deep convolutional networks (DCNN) architecture to represent fine-grained details of US image. Also, very small (3×3) convolution filters are adopted to improve the performance. The evaluation of our FFSP dataset shows the superiority of our method over the previous studies and achieves the state-of-the-art FFSP recognition results.

Though interactive direct volume rendering produces meaningful images with high quality, it cannot display separate inner ear labyrinth or cochlea only by adjusting imaging parameters to suppress the surrounding structures. Novel semi-automatic segmentation methods were presented to extract the cochlea and inner ear from spiral CT images. The cochlea was separated from the medical image volume by applying the 3D narrow band level set segmentation algorithm with user interaction introduced to locate the initial contour and adjust the parameters. The inner ear was extracted with a similar semi-automatic segmentation method: manual segmentation was first applied to remove several closely interconnected regions in boundary by viewing image volume slice by slice, then the 3D narrow band level set segmentation algorithm was used to complete fine segmentation on image volume. Generating 3D models of cochlea and inner ear structures with such methods not only takes advantage of the combination of 2D images with 3D volume but also saves much time of post-processing. The segmented results were rendered with the Marching Cubes surface rendering method. The correlation of the point on the resultant surface to the three orthogonal sections that intersect at that point on the surface was built to evaluate the segmented object and display the spatial relations of the anatomical structures. The performance of the presented semi-automatic segmentation methods is tested using spiral CT images of the temporal bone.

The strategy for implementing PACS in China is currently hospital-oriented, that causes difficulties of transferring patients among hospitals and sharing patients' images and other case information among doctors. To overcome such shortcomings, an open strategy, which is patient-oriented, was presented. In the open strategy, connections among all the hospitals could be established through Internet by image center, and patient-oriented mechanism also covers the courses of image archiving and other case information management, that would make the limited resources of experienced doctors sharable among all the patients effectively. Moreover, the security, authenticity and validity of patients' images and other case information could be guaranteed better than before. A primary application on probation of PACS implemented with such an open strategy, which was put into practice in China, was also presented. According to the results, the open strategy could extend the application area of PACS from large hospitals to small ones and expedite building of electrical hospitals in China.

Although 3D heart and torso model with realistic geometry are basis of simulation computation in LFX virtual cardiac model, the simulation results are mostly output in 2D format. To solve such a problem and enhance the virtual reality of LFX virtual cardiac model, the methods of voxel mapping and vertex project mapping were presented. With these methods, excitation isochrone map (EIM) was mapped from heart model with realistic geometry to real visible man heart model, and body surface potential map (BSPM) was mapped from torso model with realistic geometry to real visible man body surface. By visualizing in the 4Dview, which is a real-time 3D medical image visualization platform, the visualization results of EIM and BSPM simulation data before and after mapping were also provided. According to the visualization results, the output format of EIM and BSPM simulation data of LFX virtual cardiac model were extended from 2D to 4D (spatio-temporal) and from cardiac model with realistic geometry to real cardiac model, and more realistic and effective simulation was achieved.