Decrease in Tongue Pressure in Frail Patients in the Sitting Position and Its Alleviation by Plantar Grounding.

Purpose: The deterioration of oral function has received much attention, also being referred to as "Oral frailty". This study evaluated the change in tongue pressure, one of the objective items of oral frailty, to examine the relationship between body position and tongue pressure.

Methods: This study was a prospective, observational study conducted in a single center.

A Comprehensive Clinical Review of Maxillary Sinus Floor Elevation in Patients with Well-Defined Faintly Radiopaque Lesions in the Antrum.

Well-defined, faintly radiopaque lesions are occasionally observed in the antrum of the maxillary sinus in asymptomatic patients during maxillary sinus floor elevation. These lesions are treated as antral pseudocysts (AP) based on the clinical diagnosis in some cases, and maxillary sinus floor elevation is performed without enucleating these lesions. However, further surgery is required after implant placement if the lesion is a mucocele, odontogenic cyst, or tumour.

Development of a z-axis tilting technique using a chest phantom to reduce radiation exposure during computed tomography coronary angiography.

Japan has the highest estimated exposure frequency of diagnostic X-rays in the world. Furthermore, the volumetric computed tomography dose index (CTDIvol) and dose length product (DLP) of computed tomography coronary angiography are relatively high in Japanese diagnostic reference levels, and it is important to reduce both dose indices. This study proposed a new exposure reduction technique, the vanishing liver position (VLP), where the body is tilted to the right in the z-axis.

Feasibility of using counts-per-volume approach with a new SPECT phantom to optimize the relationship between administered dose and acquisition time.

We developed a phantom for single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), with the objective of assessing image quality to optimize administered dose and acquisition time. We investigated whether the concept of counts-per-volume (CPV), which is used as a predictor of visual image quality in positron emission tomography, can be used to estimate the acquisition time required for each SPECT image. QIRE phantoms for the head (QIRE-h) and torso (QIRE-t) were developed to measure four physical indicators of image quality in a single scan: uniformity, contrast of both hot and defective lesions with respect to the background, and linearity between radioactivity concentration and count density.

Electrostatically-sprayed carbon electrodes for high performance organic complementary circuits.

Organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) are promising building blocks of flexible printable electronic devices. Similar to inorganic FETs, OTFTs are heterostructures consisting of metals, insulators, and semiconductors, in which nanoscale interfaces between different components should be precisely engineered. However, OTFTs use noble metals, such as gold, as electrodes, which has been a bottleneck in terms of cost reduction and low environmental loading.