Method for location of puncture point guided by digital mammography image.

The main purpose of this study was to develop a method that can optimize the algorithm for puncture point calculation, and therefore improve the accuracy of X-ray guided breast biopsy. The proposed method is: first, select two guiding points; then, use the guiding points to construct X-ray cone-beams, so the joining section of the cone-beams can be used to determine the puncture target point. The method was verified by a phantom emulation, in which the calculated target-points were all found within the central part of the target lesion, and far away from the boarder of the lesion (change the x-ray tube angle by 15° would only cause a slight deviation no more than 1.

A novel conotoxin from Conus betulinus, kappa-BtX, unique in cysteine pattern and in function as a specific BK channel modulator.

A novel conotoxin, kappa-conotoxin (kappa-BtX), has been purified and characterized from the venom of a worm-hunting cone snail, Conus betulinus. The toxin, with four disulfide bonds, shares no sequence homology with any other conotoxins. Based on a partial amino acid sequence, its cDNA was cloned and sequenced.