Classifying Microscopic Acute and Old Myocardial Infarction Using Convolutional Neural Networks.

Convolutional neural network (CNN) has advanced in recent years and translated from research into medical practice, most notably in clinical radiology and histopathology. Research on CNNs in forensic/postmortem pathology is almost exclusive to postmortem computed tomography despite the wealth of research into CNNs in surgical/anatomical histopathology. This study was carried out to investigate whether CNNs are able to identify and age myocardial infarction (a common example of forensic/postmortem histopathology) from histology slides.

Hemorrhagic Pseudocyst: A Rare Cerebral Mass Lesion Causing Death. A Case Report and Brief Review of Literature.

Mass lesions in the brain encompass a wide range neoplastic and nonneoplastic entities. These can present as a diagnostic pitfall, with nonspecific, overlapping symptoms and similar appearances on radiology. They may cause death through varied mechanisms, either specific to the underlying pathophysiology or due to the space-occupying effect of the lesion.

Phlegmonous Psoas Muscle Infection Causing Sepsis and Death With Missing Postmortem Computed Tomography Scan Correlation.

Infection of the psoas muscle is a rare pathology, which carries a high risk of sepsis and is a potential cause of death. Classic symptoms include back pain and fever and it may be diagnosed premortem on computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging, where abscess formation may be identified as a discrete rim enhancing and low-attenuation lesion. Infections without abscess formation, such as phlegmonous infection, may be more difficult to identify however, particularly if there is absence of other nonspecific findings, such as gas bubbles.

Identifying gross post-mortem organ images using a pre-trained convolutional neural network.

Identifying organs/tissue and pathology on radiological and microscopic images can be performed using convolutional neural networks (CNN). However, there are scant studies on applying CNN to post-mortem gross images of visceral organs. This proof-of-concept study used 537 gross post-mortem images of dissected brain, heart, lung, liver, spleen, and kidney, which were randomly divided into a training and teaching datasets for the pre-trained CNN Xception.

Combining Postmortem Cerebrospinal Fluid Biochemistry With Lung-to-Body Ratio to Aid the Diagnosis of Salt Water Drowning.

Diagnosing drowning as a cause of death can pose many challenges for the forensic pathologist and a number of ancillary tests have been proposed to assist in the diagnosis, whether the body was in salt water or fresh water. Although elevated vitreous humor sodium and chloride is a reliable marker, its limitation to prolonged immersion has resulted in the recent investigation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) sodium and chloride as alternative matrix in cases of longer or unknown immersion times. This study investigated postmortem CSF from lumbar puncture (CSF_L_Na_Cl) and ventricular aspiration (CSF_Vent_Na_Cl), as well as lung/body (LB) ratio in the diagnosis of salt water drowning and performed comparison and combination testing of methods to improve diagnostic accuracy of the drowning diagnosis.

Public perceptions of comparative effectiveness research and use of evidence in healthcare decision-making.

Aims: This study elaborates on the public's understanding of comparative effectiveness research (CER) or patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR), attitudes toward CER/PCOR and use of evidence in healthcare decision-making.

Materials & Methods: We conducted six focus groups with the general public - three with individuals actively engaged in healthcare decision-making and three with individuals more passive in their approach.

Results: The general public has little knowledge of CER/PCOR, and its perceptions of certain CER/PCOR concepts are inconsistent with those of researchers and policy-makers.

Enzymes and metabolites of cysteine metabolism in nonhepatic tissues of rats show little response to changes in dietary protein or sulfur amino acid levels.

In liver, cysteine dioxygenase (CDO), cysteinesulfinate decarboxylase (CSD), and gamma-glutamylcysteine synthetase (GCS) play important regulatory roles in the metabolism of cysteine to sulfate, taurine and glutathione. Because glutathione is released by the liver and degraded by peripheral tissues that express gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase, some peripheral tissues may be exposed to relatively high concentrations of cysteine. Rats were fed diets that contained low, moderate or high concentrations of protein or supplemental cysteine or methionine for 2 wk, and CDO, CSD and GCS activities, concentrations and mRNA levels and the concentrations of cysteine, taurine and glutathione were measured in liver, kidney, lung and brain.