Publications by authors named "N Niknafs"

Article Synopsis
  • - The study introduces a new method for non-contact respiratory rate (RR) estimation in infants, which is important given their sensitive skin, particularly in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) setting.
  • - Researchers used an advanced technique called Eulerian video magnification to enhance video footage and developed a unique way to set peak prominence thresholds to handle challenges like low light and babies being swaddled.
  • - The results show that the new algorithm reliably estimates RR, achieving high agreement with visual counts compared to traditional methods, indicating its effectiveness even in challenging NICU conditions.
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There is an unmet need for effective ovarian cancer screening and diagnostic approaches that enable earlier-stage cancer detection and increased overall survival. We have developed a high-performing accessible approach that evaluates cfDNA fragmentomes and protein biomarkers to detect ovarian cancer.

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Circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is emerging as an avenue for cancer detection, but the characteristics of cfDNA fragmentation in the blood are poorly understood. We evaluate the effect of DNA methylation and gene expression on genome-wide cfDNA fragmentation through analysis of 969 individuals. cfDNA fragment ends more frequently contained CCs or CGs, and fragments ending with CGs or CCGs are enriched or depleted, respectively, at methylated CpG positions.

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Pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasias (PanINs) are the most common precursors of pancreatic cancer, but their small size and inaccessibility in humans make them challenging to study. Critically, the number, dimensions and connectivity of human PanINs remain largely unknown, precluding important insights into early cancer development. Here, we provide a microanatomical survey of human PanINs by analysing 46 large samples of grossly normal human pancreas with a machine-learning pipeline for quantitative 3D histological reconstruction at single-cell resolution.

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Genetic changes in repetitive sequences are a hallmark of cancer and other diseases, but characterizing these has been challenging using standard sequencing approaches. We developed a de novo kmer finding approach, called ARTEMIS (Analysis of RepeaT EleMents in dISease), to identify repeat elements from whole-genome sequencing. Using this method, we analyzed 1.

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