Background: Accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) is an accepted treatment option for early breast cancer. Treatment delivered on the Magnetic Resonance integrated Linear Accelerator (MRL) provides the added assurance of improved soft tissue visibility, important in the delivery of APBI. This technique can be delivered in both the supine and prone positions, however current literature suggests that prone treatment on the MRL is infeasible due to physical limitations with bore size.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHealth Promot Chronic Dis Prev Can
August 2024
Usher syndrome (USH) is the most common cause of inherited deaf-blindness. Here, we produced the LEIi020-A and LEIi020-B induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines from dermal fibroblasts derived from a patient with USH1B caused by inheritance of homozygous c.496del variants in MYO7A using episomal plasmids encoding OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, L-MYC, LIN28, mir302/367 microRNA and shRNA for TP53.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe objective of this scoping review is to evaluate the potential of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and to determine which of the available MRI techniques reported in the literature are the most promising for assessing treatment response in breast cancer patients following neoadjuvant radiotherapy (NRT). Ovid Medline, Embase, CINAHL, and Cochrane databases were searched to identify relevant studies published from inception until March 13, 2023. After primary selection, 2 reviewers evaluated each study using a standardized data extraction template, guided by set inclusion and exclusion criteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDosimetry audits for passive motion management require dynamically-acquired measurements in a moving phantom to be compared to statically calculated planned doses. This study aimed to characterise the relationship between planning and delivery errors, and the measured dose in the Imaging and Radiation Oncology Core (IROC) thorax phantom, to assess different audit scoring approaches. Treatment plans were created using a 4DCT scan of the IROC phantom, equipped with film and thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUp to 1.5 billion people worldwide suffer from various forms of hearing loss, with an additional 1.1 billion people at risk from various insults such as increased consumption of recreational noise-emitting devices and ageing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite significant advances in the development of therapeutics for hearing loss, drug delivery to the middle and inner ear remains a challenge. As conventional oral or intravascular administration are ineffective due to poor bioavailability and impermeability of the blood-labyrinth-barrier, localized delivery is becoming a preferable approach for certain drugs. Even then, localized delivery to the ear precludes continual drug delivery due to the invasive and potentially traumatic procedures required to access the middle and inner ear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe purpose of this study was to examine the menstrual cycle (MC) characteristics, explore the impact on performance, and identify barriers to and facilitators of MC-related communication among high-performance female adolescent athletes in Singapore. Ninety athletes (15.4 ± 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Australian citrus industry remains one of the few in the world to be unaffected by the African and the Asian citrus psyllids, Del Guercio and Kuwayama, respectively, and the diseases their vectored bacteria can cause. Surveillance, early detection, and strict quarantine measures are therefore fundamental to safeguard Australian citrus. However, long-term targeted surveillance for exotic citrus pests can be a time-consuming and expensive activity, often relying on manually screening large numbers of trap samples and morphological identification of specimens, which requires a high level of taxonomic knowledge.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Completion gastrectomy with lymphadenectomy for remnant gastric cancer (RGC) is currently the gold standard for patients with resectable disease. Multiple surgical approaches can be adopted; however, there exists no agreement on the best choice due to the low incidence of RGC. With its anticipated increase in prevalence, we thus sought to evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of the laparoscopic approach versus conventional laparotomy via a pooled analysis of existing literature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) for lung tumours has become a mainstay of clinical practice worldwide. Measurements in anthropomorphic phantoms enable verification of patient dose in clinically realistic scenarios. Correction factors for reporting dose to the tissue equivalent materials in a lung phantom are presented in the context of a national dosimetry audit for SBRT.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhys Imaging Radiat Oncol
October 2022
Background: Studies have suggested a link between prenatal maternal acetaminophen use and adverse developmental outcomes in children. However, there exists a knowledge gap regarding overall cognitive development and use of acetaminophen, especially concerning the timing of use in pregnancy. This study aimed to characterize the relationship between maternal acetaminophen use and cognitive development at 4 years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Maternal prenatal psychological distress (PPD) is increasingly linked to sub-optimal child neurodevelopment. Daily intake of prenatal vitamin during pre-conception and early pregnancy may ameliorate the effects of PPD on cognition in the offspring.
Methods: PPD was assessed in early (12-16 weeks) and late (28-32 weeks) gestation in the Ontario Birth Study.
Background And Purpose: Synthetic diamond detectors offer real time measurement of dose in radiotherapy applications which require high spatial resolution. Additional considerations and corrections are required for measurements where the diamond detector is orientated at various angles to the incident beam. This study investigated diamond detectors for end-to-end testing of Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) and Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS) in the context of dosimetry audits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: The aim of this study is to investigate overdose to organs at risk (OARs) observed in dosimetry audits in Monte Carlo (MC) algorithms and Linear Boltzmann Transport Equation (LBTE) algorithms. The impact of penumbra modeling on OAR dose was assessed with the adjustment of MC modeling parameters and the clinical relevance of the audit cases was explored with a planning study of spine and head and neck (H&N) patient cases.
Methods: Dosimetric audits performed by the Australian Clinical Dosimetry Service (ACDS) of 43 anthropomorphic spine plans and 1318 C-shaped target plans compared the planned dose to doses measured with ion chamber, microdiamond, film, and ion chamber array.
Background: The global pest spotted winged drosophila (Drosophila suzukii) continues to have a significant economic impact on fruit production in areas where it is established, in addition to newly invaded ranges. Management activities spanning national biosecurity responses to farm-scale pest control are limited by the inability to predict the timing and severity of seasonal outbreaks of D. suzukii and its climatic drivers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Michigan Hand Outcomes Questionnaire (MHQ), a self-reported questionnaire for patients with hand disorders, has been widely used globally. It has been cross-culturally adapted into different languages across all continents. Aims of this study were to translate the MHQ into Malay language and to evaluate its reliability and validity compared with Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand (DASH) questionnaire in a Malay-speaking population.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Current quality assurance of radiotherapy involving bony regions generally utilises homogeneous phantoms and dose calculations, ignoring the challenges of heterogeneities with dosimetry problems likely occurring around bone. Anthropomorphic phantoms with synthetic bony materials enable realistic end-to-end testing in clinical scenarios. This work reports on measurements and calculated corrections required to directly report dose in bony materials in the context of comprehensive end-to-end dosimetry audit measurements (63 plans, 6 planning systems).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To promote consistency in clinical trials by recommending a uniform framework as it relates to radiation transport and dose calculation in water versus in medium.
Methods: The Global Quality Assurance of Radiation Therapy Clinical Trials Harmonisation Group (GHG; www.rtqaharmonization.