Simple scoring system for early management of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia.

This study was performed to develop a simple scoring system to aid in the early clinical management of patients suspected of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) with regard to decisions for continued heparin therapy. The system was designed to arrive at low (0) or possible (1) probability scores without knowledge of laboratory test results (except platelet counts) to avoid delays. As the safest clinical approach is to discontinue heparin, intermediate and high scores were combined.

Comparison of two-dimensional and three-dimensional iterative watershed segmentation methods in hepatic tumor volumetrics.

In this work the authors compare the accuracy of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) implementations of a computer-aided image segmentation method to that of physician observers (using manual outlining) for volume measurements of liver tumors visualized with diagnostic contrast-enhanced and PET/CT-based non-contrast-enhanced (PET-CT) CT scans. The method assessed is a hybridization of the watershed method using observer-set markers with a gradient vector flow approach. This method is known as the iterative watershed segmentation (IWS) method.