Effect of acupuncture on tic disorder: a randomized controlled clinical trial based on energy metabolomics and infrared thermography.

Background: Acupuncture is a method for treating tic disorder. However, there is a lack of sufficient clinical objective basis in regards of its treatment efficacy. Indeed, there are structural abnormalities present in energy metabolism and infrared thermography in children with tic disorder.

Optimization of uniformity in coronary artery enhancement using a bolus tracking technique with a dual region of interest in coronary computed tomographic angiography.

Background: Consistent coronary artery enhancement is essential to achieve accurate and reproducible quantification of coronary plaque composition.

Purpose: To optimize coronary artery uniformity of enhancement using a bolus tracking technique with a dual region of interest (ROI) in coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) on a 320-detector CT scanner.

Material And Methods: This prospective study recruited 100 consecutive patients who underwent CCTA and were randomly divided into two groups, namely, a manual trigger group (n = 50), in which a manual fast start technique was used to start the diagnostic scan with the visual evaluation of attenuation in the left atrium and left ventricle, and an automatic trigger group (n = 50), in which a bolus tracking technique was used to automatically start the breath-holding command and diagnostic scan with two ROIs placed in the right and left ventricles.

Coronary artery calcium scoring assessment in ultra-low-dose chest computed tomography.

Objectives: To investigate the effect of non-electrocardiogram (ECG) -triggered ultra-low-dose CT (ULD-CT) with different reconstruction protocols on coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring assessment, compared with ECG-triggered CAC CT (CAC-CT).

Methods: This prospective study included 115 patients who underwent CAC-CT and ULD-CT scans under the same topogram images. CAC-CT adopted a prospective ECG-triggered sequential acquisition with a tube potential of 120 kV, and the reconstruction protocol was standard Qr36 + slice 3 mm (CAC group).

Aging of Chinese bony orbit: automatic calculation based on UNet++ and connected component analysis.

Purpose: Current research on the aging of bony orbit is usually done manually, which is inefficient and has a large error. In this paper, automatic segmentation of bony orbit based on deep learning and automatic calculation of the parameters of the segmented orbital contour (area and height of bony orbit) are presented.

Methods: The craniofacial CT scanning data of 595 Chinese were used to carry out three-dimensional reconstruction and output the craniofacial images.

Deep Learning-Based CT Radiomics for Feature Representation and Analysis of Aging Characteristics of Asian Bony Orbit.

Objective: This paper puts forward a new method for automatic segmentation of bony orbit as well as automatic extraction and classification of aging features of segmented orbit contour based on depth learning, with which the aging mode of bony orbit contour is preliminarily validated.

Method: Three-dimensional reconstruction was carried out by using the craniofacial Computed Tomography scanning data of 595 adult Mongolians at different ages (119 young males, 78 young females, 109 middle-aged males, 89 middle-aged females, 95 elderly males, and 105 elderly females), the craniofacial images were exported, orbit contour images were obtained with U-Net segmentation network, and then the orbit contour features of young group, the middle-aged group and the elderly group were classified with the classification network. Next, contour area, height, and other features put forward in existing research were automatically calculated by using the connected component shape description method; and it was validated whether the aging features of the bony orbit only occur to partial or the whole orbit.

Size-Specific Dose Estimates of Radiation Based on Body Weight and Body Mass Index for Chest and Abdomen-Pelvic CTs.

Background: To correlate body weight, body mass index (BMI), and water-equivalent diameter ( ) and to assess size-specific dose estimates (SSDEs) based on body weight and BMI for chest and abdomen-pelvic CT examinations.

Methods: An in-house program was used to calculate , size-dependent conversion factor (), and SSDE for 1178 consecutive patients undergoing chest and abdomen-pelvic CT examinations. Associations among body weight, BMI, and were determined, and linear equations were generated using linear regression analysis of the first 50% of the patient population.

Tensile mechanical performance of Ni-Co alloy nanowires by molecular dynamics simulation.

In this present contribution, tensile mechanical properties of Ni-Co alloy nanowires with Co content from 0 to 20% were studied by molecular dynamics. The simulation results show the alloy nanowire with the Co content of 5% has the highest yield value of 9.72 GPa.