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Automatic extraction of cerebral vessels and cranial nerves has important clinical value in the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia (TGN) and hemifacial spasm (HFS). However, because of the great similarity between different cerebral vessels and between different cranial nerves, it is challenging to segment cerebral vessels and cranial nerves in real time on the basis of true-color microvascular decompression (MVD) images. In this paper, we propose a lightweight, fast semantic segmentation Microvascular Decompression Network (MVDNet) for MVD scenarios which achieves a good trade-off between segmentation accuracy and speed. Specifically, we designed a Light Asymmetric Bottleneck (LAB) module in the encoder to encode context features. A Feature Fusion Module (FFM) was introduced into the decoder to effectively combine high-level semantic features and underlying spatial details. The proposed network has no pretrained model, fewer parameters, and a fast inference speed. Specifically, MVDNet achieved 76.59% mIoU on the MVD test set, has 0.72 M parameters, and has a 137 FPS speed using a single GTX 2080Ti card. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnopharmacological relevance Corydalis hendersonii Hemsl. (CH) with heat clearing and detoxifying effects are well described in Tibetan folk medicine. It has been used for centuries in China largely for the treatment of high altitude polycythemia, a pathophysiological condition referred to “plethora” in Tibetan medicine, hypertension, hepatitis, edema, gastritis, and other infectious diseases. Aim of the study To investigate the cardioprotective effects of Corydalis hendersonii extract in an ICR mouse model of myocardial ischemic injury. Materials and methods Ethanol [85% (v/v)] extract of CH whole plant was prepared, and their chemical profile was analyzed with use of HPLC-DAD and IT-TOF-ESI-MS. A mouse model of AMI was established by ligation of the left ventricular dysfunction (LAD) coronary artery. Mice were randomly divided into six groups (n = 12 per group): sham group, model group, CH groups treated with three doses of CH (100, 200, and 400 mg/kg, intragastric), and a positive control group (captopril, 16.67 mg/kg, intragastric). Heart function was evaluated by measurement of ejection fraction (EF) and fractional shortening (FS) by echocardiography. Serum levels of creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), plasma levels of angiotensin II (AngII), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-1ß (IL-1ß) and expressions of matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) and MMP-9 in the cardiac tissue homogenate, protein expressions of signal-transduction proteins, p65, IκBα, JAK2, and STAT3 in heart tissues were measured by ELISA and Western blot analyses. Inflammatory cell infiltration and changes in collagen deposition in the myocardial ischemic heart tissues were observed by histopathological examination. Platelet aggregation in vitro was also assessed. Results CH treatment showed a dose-dependent cardioprotective effect. It significantly reduced left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVEDd) and left ventricular end-diastolic diameter (LVEDs), improved EF and FS as compared to those in the model group; attenuated the increase levels of CK-MB and LDH in serum; reduced expressions of AngII, TNF- α , IL-6 and IL-1ß in plasma, MMP-2 and MMP-9 expressions in the cardiac tissue homogenate; and down-regulated myocardial expressions of p-p65, p-IκBα, p-JAK2, p-STAT3, MMP-2, and MMP-9 in AMI mice. Also, an obvious reduction in inflammatory cell infiltration in the myocardial infarct was found in all CH treated groups. Besides, CH also inhibited platelet aggregation induced by THR, ADP, and AA. Conclusion CH extract exerted a protective effect against myocardial ischemic injury via inhibition of inflammation, myocardial fibrosis, and platelet aggregation. This study demonstrates such protection for the first time and provides a basis for development of CH-based drugs for treatment of ischemic heart disease in clinical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pair of enantiomeric alkaloids, (±) hendersine A ( 1a and 1b ), featuring an unprecedented couple pattern of an isoquinoline and a succinic acid derivative, a new isoquinoline hendersine B ( 2 ), and a known (+)-magnoflorine ( 3 ) were isolated from the EtOH extract of Corydalis hendersonii . Their structures were elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic data including HRESIMS, NMR, and experimental and calculated electronic circular dichroism (ECD). Compound 3 exhibited strong inhibitory effects against Ca 2+ overload in glutamate-induced PC12 cells. Compounds 1 – 3 exhibited a protective effect against H9c2 myocyte injuries induced by LPS-stimulation conditioned medium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Meconopsis plants (Chinese: 绿绒篙), belonging to the family Papaveraceae, have been used as traditional Tibetan medicine (TTM) for thousands of years. Meconopsis has the effects of clearing heat, reducing swelling, and easing pain, and is mainly prescribed for heat syndromes, hepatitis, pneumonia, and pain in joints. Phytochemical studies have revealed the presence of major isoquinoline alkaloids and flavonoids. Modern pharmacological research has demonstrated its antitumor, hepatoprotective, analgestic, antimicrobial, anti-oxidant, antitussive, and anti-inflammatory activities. However, resource availability, in-depth in vivo pharmacological study and qualitative and quantitative analysis are still insufficient and deserve further efforts. This paper provides a comprehensive advance on the ethnopharmacological, phytochemical, and pharmacological studies of the genus, in hopes of promoting a better understanding of their medicinal values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image semantic segmentation has been applied more and more widely in the fields of satellite remote sensing, medical treatment, intelligent transportation, and virtual reality. However, in the medical field, the study of cerebral vessel and cranial nerve segmentation based on true-color medical images is in urgent need and has good research and development prospects. We have extended the current state-of-the-art semantic-segmentation network DeepLabv3+ and used it as the basic framework. First, the feature distillation block (FDB) was introduced into the encoder structure to refine the extracted features. In addition, the atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP) module was added to the decoder structure to enhance the retention of feature and boundary information. The proposed model was trained by fine tuning and optimizing the relevant parameters. Experimental results show that the encoder structure has better performance in feature refinement processing, improving target boundary segmentation precision, and retaining more feature information. Our method has a segmentation accuracy of 75.73%, which is 3% better than DeepLabv3+. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meconopsis horridula Hook. f. & Thomson (MH) is a traditional Tibetan medicine used to promote blood circulation, remove bruises, remove stasis and relieve chest pain which benefit to cardiovascular diseases. Oleracein E (OE), a major tetrahydroisoquinoline alkaloid, can be isolated from MH ethanol extract. The antioxidant and anti-apoptotic effects of OE have been reported by previous pharmacological research. The objective of this article was to investigate the cardioprotective effects of MH extract and OE in an ICR mouse of acute myocardial ischaemic injury. A left anterior descending (LAD) artery ligation mouse model of AMI was established. In vivo , cardiac function after MH and OE treatment was determined through measurement of EF, FS, LVEDd, and LVEDs by echocardiography. The levels of SOD, MDA, CK-MB and LDH in serum were also detected. A TUNEL assay was used to verify apoptosis. Changes in collagen deposition and inflammatory cell infiltration in ischemic myocardial tissue were observed by histopathological examination. In vitro , H9c2 cells were pre-treated with OE for 6 h, and then cultured in serum-free medium with H 2 O 2 for 2 h. CCK8 assay measured cell viability, and flow cytometry determined apoptosis levels and ROS content. The mechanism was explored by western blotting. These results showed that MH and OE significantly affected acute myocardial ischaemia by improving cardiac function and that OE downregulated the expression of related proteins in the MAPK signalling pathway. These findings provide substantial evidence of MH may applicate in clinic, and indicate that such medicines have potential value for the treatment of ischaemia-induced heart disease. Image 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuous monitoring of the changing process is an important application field of electrical tomography (ET). In this changing process, the size, position and shape of measured objects are always alterative. The trackability of algorithms to the change of measured objects is important to the application of ET. The single object model group and two-object-model group were established to simulate the change of measured objects. The single object model group includes the circle model group and square model group. The suitable evaluation parameters were designed to evaluate the trackability of the different algorithms quantitatively, which includes the single image parameter and group parameter. Evaluation software was developed, which can generate measured boundary data of different models, complete reconstructed image greying, calculate evaluation parameters and plot parameter curves, etc. Furthermore, the trackability of ten selected algorithms was evaluated by this evaluation software. The results show that the trackability of the different algorithms is different in the evaluation of the different model group. Therefore, the different model group should be established according to the application requirement. Then the suitable algorithm for a particular application could be chosen through the evaluation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This study aimed to investigate the application value of "time in ranges (TIRs)" in dialysis patients with diabetes and summarize the experience of optimizing glycemic control by flash glucose monitoring (FGM) system. Methods: In this monocentric 2-week pilot study, FGM was applied for 14 days in 57 type 2 diabetes mellitus medically stable patients under maintenance hemodialysis to determine their glycemic improvement. The diagnostic value of TIR versus HbA1c in detecting glucose fluctuations and levels was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic analysis. Results: Average glucose exhibited stronger association with TIR (r = −0.785, p < 0.001) than HbA1c (r = 0.644, p < 0.001), and mean amplitude of glycemic excursion (MAGE) had the same conclusion (r = −0.568, p < 0.001 for TIR vs. r = 0.423, p = 0.016 for HbA1c). TIR exhibited a higher area under curve than HbA1c in detecting significant derangements in glucose fluctuation, using a 14-day average FGM-derived coefficient of variation >36% as the reference standard (difference between areas: 0.237; 95% CI 0.092–0.383, p = 0.001). We found a significant improvement in TIR (58.38 ± 19.42 vs. 46.45 ± 24.42 mmol/L, p < 0.001) and a significant decline in MAGE (median 5.64 vs.7.42 mmol/L, p < 0.001) compared to the baseline without deterioration of time spent in hypoglycemia. Conclusion: TIR seems to be feasible and clinically useful for AGP analysis in dialysis patients with diabetes, and FGM can be used to improve glycemic control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classification of electroencephalogram-based motor imagery (MI-EEG) tasks raises a big challenge in the design and development of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). In view of the characteristics of nonstationarity, time-variability, and individual diversity of EEG signals, a deep learning framework termed SSD-SE-convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed for MI-EEG classification. The framework consists of three parts: 1) the sparse spectrotemporal decomposition (SSD) algorithm is proposed for feature extraction, overcoming the drawbacks of conventional time–frequency analysis methods and enhancing the robustness to noise; 2) a CNN is constructed to fully exploit the time–frequency features, thus outperforming traditional classification methods both in terms of accuracy and kappa value; and 3) the squeeze-and-excitation (SE) blocks are adopted to adaptively recalibrate channelwise feature responses, which further improves the overall performance and offers a compelling classification solution for MI-EEG applications. Experimental results on two datasets reveal that the proposed framework outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of both classification quality and robustness. The advantages of SSD-SE-CNN include high accuracy, high efficiency, and robustness to cross-trial and cross-session variations, making it an ideal candidate for long-term MI-EEG applications. Note to Practitioners—Motor imagery-based brain–computer interfaces (MI-BCIs) are widely used to allow a user to control a device using only his or her neural activity. This article proposed a new framework to classify two-class MI tasks based on electroencephalography (EEG) signals. In this framework, a new sparse spectrotemporal decomposition method is used to extract time–frequency features from EEG signals. A convolutional neural network with squeeze-and-excitation blocks is then constructed to classify the MI tasks. We show the superiority of our method on two datasets and prove its feasibility for long-term MI-BCI applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To solve the underdetermined problem and the mismatches of position and size of the objects caused by the ill-posed sensitivity matrix in electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) image reconstruction, an alternating direction approximate newton (ADAN) method is developed. Based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMMs), this algorithm utilizes the Bregman operator splitting (BOS) algorithm to segment the total variation (TV) regularization model. An approximation to Newton’s method, in which a term in Newton’s hessian is replaced by a Barzilai–Borwein (BB) approximation, is used to solve the subproblems after segmentation, and the complete convergence proof and the stability analysis of the algorithm are provided. The quantitative analysis of reconstruction results of the ADAN, Landweber, modified Landweber, Newton, and ${l}_{1}$ regularization methods shows that the average relative error (RE) of ADAN in the reconstruction of ten flow images is 0.2199, which is lower than that of reconstructed by the other four algorithms. The average correlation coefficient (CC) of the reconstructed images of ADAN is higher than that reconstructed by the ${l}_{1}$ regularization, Newton, modified Landweber, and Landweber methods, which are 0.8539, 0.6792, 0.6251, 0.6545, 0.6665, and 0.6614, separately. Moreover, under the same iteration stopping condition, the iteration time of ADAN is the shortest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Hyaluronic acid (HA) plays critical roles in the structural skeleton, joint lubrication, renal function and cell signaling. We previously showed that partially N-butyrylated, low molecular weight, hyaluronic acid (BHA) exhibited an anti-inflammatory effect in cultured human macrophage, where inflammation was induced either by a TL-4 agonist or the low molecular weight HA itself, in dose-dependent fashion. Objectives: To investigate the anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, and antihyperuricemic effects of BHA using animal models of acute gouty arthritis and hyperuricemia. Materials and methods: The anti-inflammatory effect of articular BHA (10 and 50 μg) injections was evaluated by measuring joint swelling and the serum levels of inflammatory cytokines in a model of acute gouty arthritis induced by intra-articular injection of monosodium urate crystals in Wistar rats (n = 10/group), in comparison to the control group with saline injection. Antioxidative and antihyperuricemic activities were investigated using intraperitoneal injections of oteracil potassium and yeast extract hyperuricemic Balb/C mice, which were treated with intraperitoneal injection of BHA at day 6–8 in the model. Results: In the gouty arthritis rat model, BHA at a higher dosage (50 μg) demonstrated a strong anti-inflammatory effect by reducing the degree of articular swelling and the serum levels of IL-1β, IL-8, IFN-γ, and MCP-1 by 5.56%, 6.55%, 15.58% and 33.18%. In the hyperuricemic mouse model, lower dosage BHA (10 μg) was sufficient to provide antioxidative activities by significantly decreasing the ROS levels in both serum and liver by 14.87% and 8.04%, while improving liver SOD by 12.77%. Intraperitoneal injection of BHA suppressed uric acid production through reducing liver XO activity by 19.78% and decreased the serum uric acid level in hyperuricemic mice by 30.41%. Conclusions: This study demonstrated for the first time that BHA exhibits anti-inflammatory, antioxidative and antihyperuricemic effects in vivo, suggesting a potential therapeutic application of BHA in gouty arthritis and hyperuricemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnopharmacological relevance The peeled stem of Syringa pinnatifolia Hemsl. (SP) is a traditional medicine in Inner Mongolia, China. The powder form of SP has been widely used for hundreds of years to relieve “He-Yi” related myocardial ischemia independently or in a traditional Chinese medicine preparation. Materials and methods SP was extracted with 95% and 80% ethanol. Chemical profiling was performed using HPLC-DAD and IT-TOF-ESI-MS analyses. Myocardial ischemia was produced by ligation of the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery to evaluate the anti-myocardial ischemia effect of SP. Male C57BL/6 mice were randomly divided into six groups (n=10 per group): a sham group, a model group, groups pretreated with SP at three dosages (20 mg/kg, 40 mg/kg, and 80 mg/kg, intragastrically), and a positive control group (acetylsalicylic acid, ASA, 53 mg/kg, intragastrically). Echocardiography was performed to determine heart function by measuring ejection fraction and fractional shortening. The levels of creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) in serum, and 6-keto-PGF 1 α and TXB 2 both in plasma and in protein homogenate of myocardial tissue were also measured. The levels of cyclooxygenase (COX)-1 and -2 in the heart tissue and their expressions in mouse myocardial tissue were determined using Western blot and an immunofluorescence assay, respectively. Inflammatory cell infiltration and collagen deposition changes in the myocardial ischemic tissue were observed by pathological examination. Results Intragastric pretreatment with SP produced a dose-dependent increase in cardiac function. SP at 80 mg/kg significantly improved the EF ( p <0.001) and FS ( p <0.01) compared with the model group, as well as the levels of serum CK-MB and LDH decreased obviously ( p <0.001), approaching those in the sham group. Besides, an obvious reduction in inflammatory cells infiltration and collagen deposition in the infarcted myocardial tissue was shown in each SP treatment group. In addition, SP increased 6-keto-PGF 1 α and decreased TXB 2 levels in the plasma, whereas the opposite pattern was observed in the protein homogenate from the myocardial tissues at the infarction edge, but keeping balance the ratio of 6-keto-PGF 1 α and TXB 2, which is better than ASA in plasma. The mechanisms is associated with the downregulated expressions of COX-1 ( p <0.05) and COX-2 ( p <0.001). Conclusions Ethanol extract of SP has a protective effect against myocardial ischemia via down regulation of COX-1 and COX-2 expression and by adjusting the ischemia-induced imbalance between 6-keto-PGF 1 α and TXB 2 . This study shows substantial evidence to support the clinical application of SP and indicates that such medicine has great potential for treating ischemia-induced heart disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The performance of biochar mediated UPCS /CM co-AD using CSTR was studied. • Synergistic effect of UPCS and char addition is obvious at medium and high OLR. • The VMP of biochar mediated UPCS/CM co-AD was 27.8–96.4% higher than other reactors. • The UPCS/CM with biochar co-AD system operated most stably with lower TAN and VFAs. The performance of biochar mediated anaerobic co-digestion (co-AD) of corn stover (CS) and chicken manure (CM) using continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) was studied. Results showed that urea pretreated CS (UPCS) and biochar addition in anaerobic digestion (AD) system can improve co-AD. The effect of urea pretreatment is similar to that of biochar addition, and their synergistic effect was apparent under medium and high OLR conditions. When the OLR was 4.2 and 6.3 g VS/L/d, the biochar mediated UPCS/CM co-AD operated stably with the VMP of 2.160 and 1.616 L/L/d, and VMP of the biochar mediated UPCS /CM were 32.8%–89.6% and 27.8%–96.4% higher than other reactors, respectively. The results reveal that urea pretreatment and biochar addition promoted AD process through strengthening the buffer capacity system established by ammonia nitrogen and volatile fatty acids and improving the degradation of lignocellulosic biomass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]