Dynamic Multiple Object Segmentation with Spatio-Temporal Filtering.

This article primarily focuses on the localization and extraction of multiple moving objects in images taken from a moving camera platform, such as image sequences captured by drones. The positions of moving objects in the images are influenced by both the camera's motion and the movement of the objects themselves, while the background position in the images is related to the camera's motion. The main objective of this article was to extract all moving objects from the background in an image.

Maritime Infrared Small Target Detection Based on the Appearance Stable Isotropy Measure in Heavy Sea Clutter Environments.

Infrared small target detection plays a crucial role in maritime security. However, detecting small targets within heavy sea clutter environments remains challenging. Existing methods often fail to deliver satisfactory performance in the presence of substantial clutter interference.

Left ventricular strain and myocardial work in short-term peritoneal dialysis patients.

Background: Initiation of dialysis encompasses new cardiovascular challenges on patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). This study used two-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography (2D-STE) to investigate the change of left ventricular (LV) myocardial function undergoing peritoneal dialysis (PD) within 1-3 months.

Methods: A total of 56 patients with ESRD and 27 healthy controls were enrolled in this prospective study.

5-HT induces regulatory B cells in fighting against inflammation-driven ulcerative colitis.

Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine or 5-HT) is a neuroendocrine peptide endowed with immunomodulatory functions. Regulatory B cells (Bregs) play an important role in maintaining intestinal immune homeostasis. We analyzed the differences of 5-HT and Bregs between peripheral blood of ulcerative colitis (UC) and healthy controls (HC).

Hybrid spatial-spectral generative adversarial network for hyperspectral image classification.

In recent years, generative adversarial networks (GNAs), consisting of two competing 2D convolutional neural networks (CNNs) that are used as a generator and a discriminator, have shown their promising capabilities in hyperspectral image (HSI) classification tasks. Essentially, the performance of HSI classification lies in the feature extraction ability of both spectral and spatial information. The 3D CNN has excellent advantages in simultaneously mining the above two types of features but has rarely been used due to its high computational complexity.

Non-invasive left ventricular myocardial work identifies subclinical myocardial involvement in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

Objective: Global myocardial work (MW) is a novel indicator that accounts for deformation and afterload, which may provide additional value for assessment of myocardial function. Non-invasive echocardiographic estimated left ventricular (LV) MW incorporates longitudinal strain curves and blood pressure data. This study sought to assess MW in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients with normal LV ejection fraction (LVEF) by two-dimensional speckle-tracking imaging (2D-STI) to reflect subclinical myocardial damage.

Active non-uniform illumination-based underwater polarization imaging method for objects with complex polarization properties.

Active polarization imaging is one of the most effective underwater optical imaging methods that can eliminate the degradation of image contrast and clarity caused by macro-molecule scattering. However, the non-uniformity of active illumination and the diversity of object polarization properties may decrease the quality of underwater imaging. This paper proposes a non-uniform illumination-based active polarization imaging method for underwater objects with complex optical properties.

Unsupervised end-to-end infrared and visible image fusion network using learnable fusion strategy.

Infrared and visible image fusion aims to reconstruct fused images with comprehensive visual information by merging the complementary features of source images captured by different imaging sensors. This technology has been widely used in civil and military fields, such as urban security monitoring, remote sensing measurement, and battlefield reconnaissance. However, the existing methods still suffer from the preset fusion strategies that cannot be adjustable to different fusion demands and the loss of information during the feature propagation process, thereby leading to the poor generalization ability and limited fusion performance.

Regulation of DNA-PK activity promotes the progression of TNBC via enhancing the immunosuppressive function of myeloid-derived suppressor cells.

Background: DNA-dependent protein kinase (DNA-PK) is engaged in DNA damage repair and is significantly expressed in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Inhibiting DNA-PK to reduce DNA damage repair provides a possibility of tumor treatment. NU7441, a DNA-PK inhibitor, can regulate the function and differentiation of CD4 T cells and effectively enhance immunogenicity of monocyte-derived dendritic cells.

An improved U-net based retinal vessel image segmentation method.

Diabetic retinopathy is not just the most common complication of diabetes but also the leading cause of adult blindness. Currently, doctors determine the cause of diabetic retinopathy primarily by diagnosing fundus images. Large-scale manual screening is difficult to achieve for retinal health screen.

Postsystolic shortening and early systolic lengthening for early detection of myocardial involvement in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

Background: Cardiac involvement predicts a poor prognosis in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Two-dimensional speckle-tracking echocardiography (2D-STE) are used to identify subclinical myocardial involvement in various diseases. This study objected to evaluate postsystolic shortening (PSS) and early systolic lengthening (ESL) by 2D-STE for early detection of myocardial involvement in patients with SLE.

Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells in Patients With Acute Pancreatitis With Increased Inhibitory Function.

Acute pancreatitis (AP) is pancreatic or systemic inflammation without or with motion organ dysfunction. Severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) is the main cause of death for patients with AP. A pro-/anti-inflammatory imbalance is considered the key regulation of disease severity.

The TOX subfamily: all-round players in the immune system.

The thymocyte selection-related HMG box protein (TOX) subfamily comprises evolutionarily conserved DNA-binding proteins, and is expressed in certain immune cell subsets and plays key roles in the development of CD4+ T cells, innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), T follicular helper (Tfh) cells, and in CD8+ T-cell exhaustion. Although its roles in CD4+ T and natural killer (NK) cells have been extensively studied, recent findings have demonstrated previously unknown roles for TOX in the development of ILCs, Tfh cells, as well as CD8+ T-cell exhaustion; however, the molecular mechanism underlying TOX regulation of these immune cells remains to be elucidated. In this review, we discuss recent studies on the influence of TOX on the development of various immune cells and CD8+ T-cell exhaustion and the roles of specific TOX family members in the immune system.

Long non-coding RNA profiles in plasma exosomes of patients with gastric high-grade intraepithelial neoplasia.

Long non-coding (lnc) RNAs in circulating exosomes are a new class of promising cancer biomarkers; however, their expression in exosomes derived from gastric high-grade intraepithelial neoplasia (GHGIN) has not been reported. In the present study, differentially expressed (DE) lncRNAs were analyzed in the peripheral blood collected from 5 patients with GHGIN and 5 healthy donors using high-throughput sequencing. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR analysis was performed on 6 randomly selected DE lncRNAs to validate the reliability of the sequencing results.

Bandwidth extension method based on the field-shunting effect in a high-gain photoelectric receiver circuit.

In the high-gain photoelectric receiver circuit, the method based on the field-shunting effect is applied to improve the bandwidth of the transimpedance amplifier. This method is implemented by adding a ground trace under the gain resistor, which reduces the parasitic capacitance of the gain resistor and thus increases the bandwidth. To obtain the specific impact of this method on bandwidth, a series of simulations are carried out, including electromagnetic simulations of a three-dimensional structure of circuit gain part and simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis (SPICE) simulations of the high-gain voltage-current feedback transimpedance amplifier.

Role of Exosomal Non-coding RNAs in Gastric Cancer: Biological Functions and Potential Clinical Applications.

Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the most common fatal cancers worldwide. The communication between GC and other cells in the GC microenvironment directly affects GC progression. Recently, exosomes have been revealed as new players in intercellular communication.

Novel Immune Subsets and Related Cytokines: Emerging Players in the Progression of Liver Fibrosis.

Liver fibrosis is a pathological process caused by persistent chronic injury of the liver. Kupffer cells, natural killer (NK) cells, NKT cells, and dendritic cells (DCs), which are in close contact with T and B cells, serve to bridge innate and adaptive immunity in the liver. Meanwhile, an imbalanced inflammatory response constitutes a challenge in liver disease.

Accuracy of gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase-to-platelet ratio (GPR), red cell distribution width (RDW), aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index (APRI), and the fibrosis-4 index (FIB4) compared with liver biopsy in patients with drug-induced liver injury (DILI).

This study objected to evaluate the accuracy of the gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase-to-platelet ratio (GPR), aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index (APRI), red cell distribution width (RDW), and fibrosis-4 index (FIB4) index, compared with liver biopsy (LB), in predicting the severity of inflammation in drug-induced liver injury (DILI) patients.We evaluated patients with DILI who were followed at the First Hospital of Jilin University and underwent LB. Accuracy of each method was analyzed using ROC analysis.

Prediction of Targets of Curculigoside A in Osteoporosis and Rheumatoid Arthritis Using Network Pharmacology and Experimental Verification.

Purpose: Network pharmacology is considered to be the next-generation drug development model that uses bioinformatics to predict and identify multiple drug targets and interactions in diseases. Here, network pharmacology was used to investigate the mechanism by which Curculigoside A (CA) acts in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoporosis.

Methods: First, TCMSP and SwissADME were applied to predict the druggability of CA.

Pulsed light time-of-flight measurement based on a differential hysteresis timing discrimination method.

In the pulsed light time-of-flight (ToF) measurement, the timing point generated in the receiver channel is very important to the measurement accuracy. Therefore, a differential hysteresis timing discrimination method is proposed to generate timing points of the receiver channel. This method is based on utilizing the unbalanced characteristics of the fully differential operational amplifier circuit as well as introducing extra hysteresis levels to achieve the stable generation of timing points.

Serotonin: A Potent Immune Cell Modulator in Autoimmune Diseases.

Serotonin, also known as 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) is a signaling mediator that regulates emotion, behavior, and cognition. Previous studies have focused more on the roles of 5-HT in the central nervous system (CNS). However, 5-HT also shares a strong relationship with the pathological cases of tumor, inflammation, and pathogen infection.

Calculating the model of a nondiagonal rotation invariant angle for a complicated scatterer.

In the research on scattering polarimetry, a scattering mechanism is described by an internal degree of freedom called rotation invariant parameter α. Traditionally, α is calculated by the diagonal scattering matrix of the single scatterer. However, when the research object is a scatterer with complicated surface and microstructure, the traditional calculation of parameter α is biased, since the corresponding scattering matrix is a nondiagonal matrix.

Robust infrared small target detection via non-negativity constraint-based sparse representation.

Infrared (IR) small target detection is one of the vital techniques in many military applications, including IR remote sensing, early warning, and IR precise guidance. Over-complete dictionary based sparse representation is an effective image representation method that can capture geometrical features of IR small targets by the redundancy of the dictionary. In this paper, we concentrate on solving the problem of robust infrared small target detection under various scenes via sparse representation theory.

Stokes-vector-based polarimetric imaging system for adaptive target/background contrast enhancement.

A novel method to optimize the polarization state of a polarimetric imaging system is proposed to solve the problem of target/background contrast enhancement in an outdoor environment adaptively. First, the last three elements of the Stokes vector are selected to be the observed object's polarization features, the discriminant projection of which is regarded as the detecting function of our imaging system. Then, the polarization state of the system, which can be seen as a physical classifier, is calculated by training samples with a support vector machine method.