Search

Introduction: Pathologies of the shoulder, i.e. rotator cuff tears and labral injuries are very common. Most patients receive MRI examination prior to surgery. A correct assessment of pathologies is significant for a detailed patient education and planning of surgery. Materials and methods: Sixty-nine patients were identified, who underwent both, a standardised shoulder MRI and following arthroscopic shoulder surgery in our hospital. For this retrospective comparative study, the MRIs were pseudonymised and evaluated separately by an orthopaedic surgeon and a radiologist. A third rater evaluated images and reports of shoulder surgery, which served as positive control. Results of all raters were then compared. The aim was an analysis of agreement rates of diagnostic accuracy of pre-operative MRI by a radiologist and an orthopaedic surgeon. Results: The overall agreement with positive control of detecting transmural cuff tears was high (84% and 89%) and lower for partial tears (70-80%). Subscapularis tears were assessed with moderate rates of agreement (60 – 70%) compared to intra-operative findings. Labral pathologies were detected mostly correctly. SLAP lesions and pulley lesions of the LHB were identified with only moderate agreement (66.4% and 57.2%) and had a high inter-rater disagreement. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that tears of the rotator cuff (supraspinatus, infraspinatus) and labral pathologies can be assessed in non-contrast pre-operative shoulder MRI images with a high accuracy. This allows a detailed planning of surgery and aftercare. Pathologies of the subscapularis tendon, SLAP lesions and biceps instabilities are more challenging to detect correctly. There were only small differences between a radiologic and orthopaedic interpretation of the images.

When dealing with large marine species, individual photographic identification plays a very important part in capture-mark-recapture studies. The success of this method is determined by the consistent correct identification of individuals, but as the number of images in the database increases, the task becomes increasingly time-consuming, affecting the accuracy of the matches. Although a few software packages are available, universally applied methods remain problematic in long-term studies, suggesting the need for species-specific software. This study presents new image recognition software tested on white sharks’ dorsal fins and is based on a dynamic time warping algorithm. The software is specifically designed to improve the matching success of individuals, to standardise the data collection and to increase the overall accuracy when managing a large capture-mark-recapture database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]