Septal late enhancement by cardiac CT is associated with repeat ablation in nonischemic cardiomyopathy patients.

Introduction: Scar substrate in nonischemic cardiomyopathy (NICM) patients is often difficult to identify. Advances in cardiac imaging, especially using late iodine-enhanced computed tomography (LIE-CT), allow better characterization of scars giving rise to ventricular tachycardia (VT). Currently, there are limited data on clinical correlates of CT-derived scar substrates in NICM.

[Integrative medicine and geriatrics : towards a convergence?].

In recent years integrative medicine has been the subject of growing interest among the overall population as well as the medical and scientific community. According to the Swiss health survey, approximately 40 % of the Swiss population regularly use complementary therapies. The fields of application of integrative medicine in geriatrics seem large (pain, cognitive disorders, end-of-life support, anxiety, etc.

Noncontact whole-chamber charge density mapping of the left ventricle: Preclinical evaluation in a sheep model.

Background: Conventional contact-based electroanatomic mapping is poorly suited for rapid or dynamic ventricular arrhythmias. Whole-chamber charge density (CD) mapping could efficiently characterize complex ventricular tachyarrhythmias and yield insights into their underlying mechanisms.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and accuracy of noncontact whole-chamber left ventricular (LV) CD mapping and to characterize CD activation patterns during sinus rhythm, ventricular pacing, and ventricular fibrillation (VF).

Identification of a new series of flavopiridol-like structures as kinase inhibitors with high cytotoxic potency.

In this work, unique flavopiridol analogs bearing thiosugars, amino acids and heterocyclic moieties tethered to the flavopiridol via thioether and amine bonds mainly on its C ring have been prepared. The analogs bearing thioether-benzimidazoles as substituents have demonstrated high cytotoxic activity in vitro against up to seven cancer cell lines. Their cytotoxic effects are comparable to those of flavopiridol.

Robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery of the spine (RAMISS): a proof-of-concept study using carbon dioxide insufflation for multilevel posterior vertebral exposure via a sub-paraspinal muscle working space.

Background: Open posterior spinal procedures involve extensive soft tissue disruption, increased hospital length of stay, and disfiguring scars. Our aim was to demonstrate the feasibility of using robotic-assistance for minimally invasive exposure of the posterolateral spine with and without carbon dioxide (CO ) insufflation.

Methods: Sheep specimens underwent minimally invasive subperiosteal dissection of the spine during three trials.

Endoscopic scene labelling and augmentation using intraoperative pulsatile motion and colour appearance cues with preoperative anatomical priors.

Purpose: Despite great advances in medical image segmentation, the accurate and automatic segmentation of endoscopic scenes remains a challenging problem. Two important aspects have to be considered in segmenting an endoscopic scene: (1) noise and clutter due to light reflection and smoke from cutting tissue, and (2) structure occlusion (e.g.

Effect of maturity and hybrid on ruminal and intestinal digestion of corn silage in dry cows.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of stage of maturity at harvest on extent of starch, neutral detergent fiber (NDF), and protein digestion, and rumen fermentation in dry cows fed whole-plant corn silage from different hybrids. Four nonlactating Holstein cows cannulated at the rumen and proximal duodenum were fed 4 corn silages differing in hybrid (flint vs. flint-dent) and maturity stage (early vs.

ERCC1 and CYP1B1 polymorphisms as predictors of response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in estrogen positive breast tumors.

Purpose: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT) using anthracyclines and taxanes is a standard treatment for locally advanced breast cancer. Efficacy of NCT is however variable among patients and predictive markers are expected to guide the selection of patients who will benefit from NCT. A promising approach stand with polymorphisms located in genes encoding drug transporters, drug metabolizing enzymes and target genes which can affect drug efficacy.

Simultaneous Multi-Structure Segmentation and 3D Nonrigid Pose Estimation in Image-Guided Robotic Surgery.

In image-guided robotic surgery, segmenting the endoscopic video stream into meaningful parts provides important contextual information that surgeons can exploit to enhance their perception of the surgical scene. This information provides surgeons with real-time decision-making guidance before initiating critical tasks such as tissue cutting. Segmenting endoscopic video is a challenging problem due to a variety of complications including significant noise attributed to bleeding and smoke from cutting, poor appearance contrast between different tissue types, occluding surgical tools, and limited visibility of the objects' geometries on the projected camera views.

Automatic segmentation of occluded vasculature via pulsatile motion analysis in endoscopic robot-assisted partial nephrectomy video.

Hilar dissection is an important and delicate stage in partial nephrectomy, during which surgeons remove connective tissue surrounding renal vasculature. Serious complications arise when the occluded blood vessels, concealed by fat, are missed in the endoscopic view and as a result are not appropriately clamped. Such complications may include catastrophic blood loss from internal bleeding and associated occlusion of the surgical view during the excision of the cancerous mass (due to heavy bleeding), both of which may compromise the visibility of surgical margins or even result in a conversion from a minimally invasive to an open intervention.

Association of type and location of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations with risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

Importance: Limited information about the relationship between specific mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 (BRCA1/2) and cancer risk exists.

Objective: To identify mutation-specific cancer risks for carriers of BRCA1/2.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Observational study of women who were ascertained between 1937 and 2011 (median, 1999) and found to carry disease-associated BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations.

Do lambs perceive regular human stroking as pleasant? Behavior and heart rate variability analyses.

Stroking by humans is beneficial to the human-animal relationship and improves welfare in many species that express intraspecific allogrooming, but very few studies have looked at species like sheep that do not express such contact except around parturition. This study investigated the way lambs perceive regular human tactile contact using behavioral and physiological responses. Twenty-four lambs were reared and bucket-fed in groups of four.

Automatic labelling of tumourous frames in free-hand laparoscopic ultrasound video.

Laparoscopic ultrasound (US) is often used during partial nephrectomy surgeries to identify tumour boundaries within the kidney. However, visual identification is challenging as tumour appearance varies across patients and US images exhibit significant noise levels. To address these challenges, we present the first fully automatic method for detecting the presence of kidney tumour in free-hand laparoscopic ultrasound sequences in near real-time.

Efficient multi-organ segmentation in multi-view endoscopic videos using pre-operative priors.

Synergistic fusion of pre-operative (pre-op) and intraoperative (intra-op) imaging data provides surgeons with invaluable insightful information that can improve their decision-making during minimally invasive robotic surgery. In this paper, we propose an efficient technique to segment multiple objects in intra-op multi-view endoscopic videos based on priors captured from pre-op data. Our approach leverages information from 3D pre-op data into the analysis of visual cues in the 2D intra-op data by formulating the problem as one of finding the 3D pose and non-rigid deformations of tissue models driven by features from 2D images.

[uPA/PAI-1, Oncotype DX™, MammaPrint(®). Prognosis and predictive values for clinical utility in breast cancer management].

Context And Aims: Breast cancer prognosis and predictive biomarkers development would allow sparing some patients from chemotherapy or identifying patients for whom chemotherapy would be indicated. In this context, in 2009, the French National Cancer Institute, a National Health and Science Agency dedicated to cancer, in collaboration with the French society of senology and breast pathology (SFSPM) published a report on the assessment of the prognostic and the predictive clinical validity of tissular biomarkers, uPA/PAI-1, Oncotype DX™ and MammaPrint(®), in breast cancer management. They concluded that only the uPA/PAI-1 prognosis value reached the highest level of evidence (LOE I according to Hayes 1998 classification).

Screening for common mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes: interest in genetic testing of Tunisian families with breast and/or ovarian cancer.

Background: In the Tunisian population, as yet a limited number of BRCA1/2 germline mutations have been reported in hereditary breast and/or ovarian cancer. These mutations are located in a few exons of BRCA1/2. The aim of the present study was to search for these mutations in 66 unrelated patients with hereditary breast and/or ovarian cancer in order to assess the interest in such a targeted approach for genetic testing in Tunisia.

Auto localization and segmentation of occluded vessels in robot-assisted partial nephrectomy.

Hilar dissection is an important and delicate stage in partial nephrectomy during which surgeons remove connective tissue surrounding renal vasculature. Potentially serious complications arise when vessels occluded by fat are missed in the endoscopic view and are not appropriately clamped. To aid in vessel discovery, we propose an automatic method to localize and label occluded vasculature.

A high-resolution cardiovascular magnetic resonance diffusion tensor map from ex-vivo C57BL/6 murine hearts.

Background: The complex cardiac fiber structural organization and spatial arrangement of cardiomyocytes in laminar sheetlets contributes greatly to cardiac functional and contractile ejection patterns. This study presents the first comprehensive, ultra-high resolution, fully quantitative statistical tensor map of the fixed murine heart at isotropic resolution of 43 μm using diffusion tensor (DT) cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR).

Methods: Imaging was completed in approximately 12 hours using a six-directional encoding scheme, in five ex vivo healthy C57BL/6 mouse hearts.

Synthesis and preliminary biological evaluation of new antiproliferative aromatic analogues of 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3.

In an effort to develop novel vitamin D3 analogues, a series of aromatic compounds was synthetized, using efficient Negishi cross coupling between alkenylzinc reagents of the C,D-ring moiety of vitamin D3, and various substituted aromatic halides as A-ring mimics. The study aimed at exploring the influence of the replacement of the original vitamin D3 diene by a styrene unit on the biological activities. Potency in the induction of the differentiation of HL-60 cells for the lead compound 36 was 12 fold less important than calcitriol correlating with a weaker binding affinity for VDR.

High STAT1 mRNA levels but not its tyrosine phosphorylation are associated with macrophage infiltration and bad prognosis in breast cancer.

Background: STAT1 has been attributed a function as tumor suppressor. However, in breast cancer data from microarray analysis indicated a predictive value of high mRNA expression levels of STAT1 and STAT1 target genes belonging to the interferon-related signature for a poor response to therapy. To clarify this issue we have determined STAT1 expression levels and activation by different methods, and investigated their association with tumor infiltration by immune cells.

Joint statistics on cardiac shape and fiber architecture.

Cardiac fiber architecture plays an important role in electrophysiological and mechanical functions of the heart. Yet, its inter-subject variability and more particularly, its relationship to the shape of the myocardium, is not fully understood. In this paper, we extend the statistical analysis of cardiac fiber architecture beyond its description with a fixed average geometry.

Discovery and hit to lead optimization of novel combretastatin A-4 analogues: dependence of C-linker length and hybridization.

We have synthesized a large variety of CA-4 analogues having a non-isomerizable C-linker between the A- and B-aromatic rings. Most of them displayed a nanomolar level of cytotoxicity against a panel of human cancer cell lines and inhibited tubulin polymerization at a micromolar level. Among all these compounds, the most interesting compounds were undoubtedly isoCA-4 and structural analogues 18-20 as well as benzil derivatives 11 which displayed a comparable level of activity than that of CA-4.

Cereal processing influences postprandial glucose metabolism as well as the GI effect.

Objective: Technological processes may influence the release of glucose in starch. The aim of this study was to compare the metabolic response and the kinetics of appearance of exogenous glucose from 2 cereal products consumed at breakfast.

Methods: Twenty-five healthy men were submitted to a randomized, open, crossover study that was divided into 2 parts: 12 of the 25 subjects were included in the "isotope part," and the 13 other subjects were included in the "glycemic part.

Serum Proteome Analysis for Profiling Predictive Protein Markers Associated with the Severity of Skin Lesions Induced by Ionizing Radiation.

The finding of new diagnostic and prognostic markers of local radiation injury, and particularly of the cutaneous radiation syndrome, is crucial for its medical management, in the case of both accidental exposure and radiotherapy side effects. Especially, a fast high-throughput method is still needed for triage of people accidentally exposed to ionizing radiation. In this study, we investigated the impact of localized irradiation of the skin on the early alteration of the serum proteome of mice in an effort to discover markers associated with the exposure and severity of impending damage.