FAFS-UNet: Redesigning skip connections in UNet with feature aggregation and feature selection.

In recent years, the encoder-decoder U-shaped network architecture has become a mainstream structure for medical image segmentation. Its biggest advantage lies in the incorporation of shallow features into deeper layers of the network through skip connections. However, according to our research, there are still some limitations in the skip connection part of the network: (1) The information from the encoder stage is not completely and effectively supplemented to the decoder stage; (2) The decoder receives the supplemented feature information from the encoder indiscriminately, which sometimes leads to the poor performance of the model.

The risk of bladder cancer in patients with urinary calculi: a meta-analysis.

The objective of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the association between a history of urinary calculi (UC) and the risk of bladder cancer (BC). A literature search was performed from inception until July 2017. Studies that reported odds ratios (OR), relative risks or hazard ratios comparing the risk of BC in patients with the history of UC vs those without the history of UC were included.