The role of epicardial fat radiomic profiles for atrial fibrillation identification and recurrence risk with coronary CT angiography.

Objectives: Fat radiomic profile (FRP) was a promising imaging biomarker for identifying increased cardiac risk. We hypothesize FRP can be extended to fat regions around pulmonary veins (PV), left atrium (LA), and left atrial appendage (LAA) to investigate their usefulness in identifying atrial fibrillation (AF) and the risk of AF recurrence.

Methods: We analysed 300 individuals and grouped patients according to the occurrence and types of AF.

Effect of Vigileo/FloTrac System-Guided Aggressive Hydration in Acute Myocardial Infarction Patients to Prevent Contrast-Induced Nephropathy After Urgent Percutaneous Coronary Intervention.

Tailored hydration strategies appear to provide an effective solution for preventing contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The Vigileo/FloTrac system could predict the patients' fluid responsiveness and tolerance to hydration. This prospective multicenter, randomized controlled, open-label study evaluated the efficacy of aggressive hydration guided by the Vigileo/FloTrac system for CIN prevention in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

From Noise Addition to Denoising: A Self-Variation Capture Network for Point Cloud Optimization.

Point clouds obtained from 3D scanners are often noisy and cannot be directly used for subsequent high-level tasks. In this article, we propose a novel point cloud optimization method capable of denoising and homogenizing point clouds. Our idea is based on the assumption that the noise is generally much smaller than the effective signal.

IntraCoronary Artery Retrograde Thrombolysis vs. Thrombus Aspiration in ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction: Study Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Type 2 diabetes (T2DM) is a major risk factor for myocardial infarction. Thrombus aspiration was considered a good way to deal with coronary thrombus in the treatment of acute myocardial infarction. However, recent studies have found that routine thrombus aspiration is not beneficial.

Intracoronary artery retrograde thrombolysis for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction with a tortuous coronary artery: A case report and review of the literature.

Background: How to deal with large thrombus burdens of culprit's blood vessel remains a great challenge in the treatment of acute myocardial infarction.

Case Presentation: A 32-year-old Chinese man was diagnosed with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Coronary angiography revealed that the distal end of a tortuous left circumflex was completely occluded by a large amount of thrombus.

Intracoronary artery retrograde thrombolysis combined with percutaneous coronary interventions for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction complicated with diabetes mellitus: A case report and literature review.

Background: The management of a large thrombus burden in patients with acute myocardial infarction and diabetes is still a worldwide problem.

Case Presentation: A 74-year-old Chinese woman presented with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) complicated with diabetes mellitus and hypertension. Angiography revealed massive thrombus formation in the mid-segment of the right coronary artery leading to vascular occlusion.

Female Fertility Has a Negative Relationship With Longevity in Chinese Oldest-Old Population: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: Despite research efforts in this field for more than a century, the relationship between female fertility and longevity is unclear. This study was designed to investigate this relationship in Chinese oldest-old population.

Methods: The China Hainan Centenarian Cohort Study was performed in 18 cities and counties of Hainan.

Effects of nicorandil on myocardial infarct size in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention: study design and protocol for the randomized controlled trial.

Previous studies have shown that nicorandil has a protective effect on cardiomyocytes. However, there is no study to investigate whether perioperative intravenous nicorandil can further reduce the myocardial infarct size in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) compared to the current standard of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) regimen. The CHANGE (China-Admini stration of Nicorandil Group) study is a multicenter, prospective, randomized, double-blind and parallel-controlled clinical study of STEMI patients undergoing primary PCI in China, aiming to evaluate the efficacy and safety of intravenous nicorandil in ameliorating the myocar dial infarct size in STEMI patients undergoing primary PCI and provide evidence-based support for myocardial protection strategies of STEMI patients.

Sitagliptin attenuates the progression of coronary atherosclerosis in patients with coronary disease and type 2 diabetes.

Background And Aims: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a well-recognized independent risk factor for ASCVD, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor, sitagliptin, on prevention of progression of coronary atherosclerosis assessed by three-dimensional quantitative coronary angiography (3D-QCA) in T2DM patients with coronary artery disease (CAD).

Methods: This was a prospective, randomized, double-center, open-label, blinded end point, controlled 18-month study in patients with CAD and T2DM. A total of 149 patients, who had at least 1 atherosclerotic plaque with 20%-80% luminal narrowing in a coronary artery, and had not undergone intervention during a clinically indicated coronary angiography or percutaneous coronary intervention, were randomized to sitagliptin group (n = 74) or control group (n = 75).

Intracoronary arterial retrograde thrombolysis with percutaneous coronary intervention: a novel use of thrombolytic to treat acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction.

Background: Clearance of coronary arterial thrombosis is necessary in patients with acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing urgent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). There is currently no highly-recommended method of thrombus removal during interventional procedures. We describe a new method for opening culprit vessels to treat STEMI: intracoronary arterial retrograde thrombolysis (ICART) with PCI.

Feed-forward frequency offset estimation for 32-QAM optical coherent detection.

Due to the non-rectangular distribution of the constellation points, traditional fast Fourier transform based frequency offset estimation (FFT-FOE) is no longer suitable for 32-QAM signal. Here, we report a modified FFT-FOE technique by selecting and digitally amplifying the inner QPSK ring of 32-QAM after the adaptive equalization, which is defined as QPSK-selection assisted FFT-FOE. Simulation results show that no FOE error occurs with a FFT size of only 512 symbols, when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is above 17.

Hypotensive effects of renal denervation in spontaneously hypertensive rat based on ultrasonic contrast imaging.

Background: Sympathetic nerves-fire rate is generally enhanced in some types of hypertension models. Renal sympathetic denervation(RSD) by the radiofrequency ablation was used to treat the hypertension has achieved curative effect.HTN-1 and HTN-2 trial reported catheter-based renal denervation may cause substantial and sustained blood-pressure reduction in patients with resistant hypertension.

Electrophysiological Characteristics of the LQT2 Syndrome Mutation and Regulation by Accessory Protein .

Mutations in cause long QT syndrome type 2 which is characterized by a prolonged QT interval on electrocardiogram and predisposition to life-threatening ventricular tachyarrhythmia, syncope, and sudden death. induces trafficking defects of channel protein from Golgi to the plasma membrane and results in a dominant negative suppression of current density. As an accessory β subunit, promotes migration from Golgi to cellular membrane.

Efficacy and safety outcomes of fractional flow reserve in guiding clinical therapy of non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction compared with angiography alone in elderly Chinese patients.

Objective: Fractional flow reserve (FFR) is an innovative method for evaluating the physiological significance of a coronary stenosis, but its validity is less certain in patients with non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI). It is important to assess whether FFR is effective and safe in patients, especially elderly Chinese patients, with NSTEMI. As the first one in China, the purpose of this study was to establish the efficacy and safety outcomes of FFR in guiding clinical therapy of NSTEMI compared with angiography alone in elderly Chinese patients.

The mitochondrial calcium uniporter is involved in mitochondrial calcium cycle dysfunction: Underlying mechanism of hypertension associated with mitochondrial tRNA(Ile) A4263G mutation.

Recent studies have shown that the mitochondrial DNA mutations are involved in the pathogenesis of hypertension. Our previous study identified mitochondrial tRNA(Ile) A4263G mutation in a large Chinese Han family with maternally-inherited hypertension. This mutation may contribute to mitochondrial Ca(2+) cycling dysfuntion, but the mechanism is unclear.

Cauchy graph embedding based diffusion model for salient object detection.

Salient object detection has been a rather hot research topic recently, due to its potential applications in image compression, scene classification, image registration, and so forth. The overwhelming majority of existing computational models are designed based on computer vision techniques by using lots of image cues and priors. Actually, salient object detection is derived from the biological perceptual mechanism, and biological evidence shows that the spread of the spatial attention generates the object attention.

Collaborative multicue fusion using the cross-diffusion process for salient object detection.

Salient object detection is very useful in a large variety of image and vision-related applications. A recent trend in salient object detection is to explore novel top-down visual cues and combine them with bottom-up saliency to improve the performance. However, a basic and important problem, i.

A biologically-inspired framework for contour detection using superpixel-based candidates and hierarchical visual cues.

Contour detection has been extensively investigated as a fundamental problem in computer vision. In this study, a biologically-inspired candidate weighting framework is proposed for the challenging task of detecting meaningful contours. In contrast to previous models that detect contours from pixels, a modified superpixel generation processing is proposed to generate a contour candidate set and then weigh the candidates by extracting hierarchical visual cues.

Aircraft Detection in High-Resolution SAR Images Based on a Gradient Textural Saliency Map.

This paper proposes a new automatic and adaptive aircraft target detection algorithm in high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of airport. The proposed method is based on gradient textural saliency map under the contextual cues of apron area. Firstly, the candidate regions with the possible existence of airport are detected from the apron area.

Method for pan-tilt camera calibration using single control point.

The pan-tilt (PT) camera is widely used in video surveillance systems due to its rotatable property and low cost. The rough output of a PT camera may not satisfy the demand of practical applications; hence an accurate calibration method of a PT camera is desired. However, high-precision camera calibration methods usually require sufficient control points not guaranteed in some practical cases of a PT camera.

Directional support value of Gaussian transformation for infrared small target detection.

Robust small target detection is one of the key techniques in IR search and tracking systems for self-defense or attacks. In this paper we present a robust solution for small target detection in a single IR image. The key ideas of the proposed method are to use the directional support value of Gaussian transform (DSVoGT) to enhance the targets, and use the multiscale representation provided by DSVoGT to reduce the false alarm rate.

Efficacy and safety of limus-eluting versus paclitaxel-eluting coronary artery stents in patients with diabetes mellitus: A meta-analysis.

Background/objectives: The relative efficacy and safety of limus-eluting stent (LES) versus paclitaxel-eluting stent (PES) in DM patients remain unclear.

Methods: The PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials electronic databases were searched from January 2001 to December 2013. Clinical trials that performed head-to-head comparisons of LES versus PES implantation in patients with DM were considered for inclusion.

[Comparison of radial versus femoral approach for percutaneous coronary intervention in octogenarians with acute coronary syndrome].

Objective: To evaluate the prognostic effects of radial artery access (RA) versus femoral artery access (FA) in octogenarians undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) due to acute coronary syndrome (ACS).

Methods: From January 2008 to January 2013, 279 octogenarians with ACS underwent PCI. PCI was performed through RA in 125 patients and FA in another 154.

Maximal entropy random walk for region-based visual saliency.

Visual saliency is attracting more and more research attention since it is beneficial to many computer vision applications. In this paper, we propose a novel bottom-up saliency model for detecting salient objects in natural images. First, inspired by the recent advance in the realm of statistical thermodynamics, we adopt a novel mathematical model, namely, the maximal entropy random walk (MERW) to measure saliency.