[Early Structural Valve Deterioration of Bioprosthetic Mitral Valve in a Dialysis Patient].

Choice of prosthetic valve during valve replacement in dialysis patients is still controversial. There is a known risk of early structural valve deterioration of bioprosthesis in dialysis patients, whereas mechanical prosthesis is associated with a higher risk of bleeding and thrombotic events. A 68-year-old dialysis-dependent woman, who had undergone bioprosthetic mitral valve replacement at the age of 66, was admitted to our hospital because of general malaise and hypotension during dialysis.

[Mitral Valve Replacement and Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy for Mitral Regurgitation with Left Ventricular Noncompaction:Report of a Case].

Left ventricular noncompaction (LVNC) is a rare congenital abnormality resulting from an arrest of the normal process of myocardial compaction. LVNC has been known as a disease of infants, however, some surgical cases of LVNC in adult have been reported. A 61-year-old man who was diagnosed as dilated cardiomyopathy due to LVNC was admitted to our hospital because of dyspnea.

[Endovascular Repair of Infected Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm whose Shape Changed during Treatment of Infection].

We report a successful case of infected thoracic aortic aneurysm treated by endovascular repair. An 82-year-old woman, presenting with intermittent back pain and low-grade fever, was transferred with the diagnosis of infected thoracic aortic aneurysm. High inflammatory reaction and a thickened aortic wall around the aneurysm confirmed the diagnosis.

Correspondence between phase oscillator network and classical XY model with the same random and frustrated interactions.

We study correspondence between a phase oscillator network with distributed natural frequencies and a classical XY model at finite temperatures with the same random and frustrated interactions used in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model. We perform numerical calculations of the spin glass order parameter q and the distributions of the local fields P(R), where R is the amplitude of the local field. As a result, we find that the parameter dependences of P(R) in both models agree fairly well in all ranges of parameters in the spin glass phase and those of q agree at least for lower values of parameters in the spin glass phase, if parameters are normalized by using the previously obtained correspondence relation between two models with the same other types of interactions.

Statistical mechanical evaluation of a spread-spectrum watermarking model with image restoration.

In cases in which an original image is blind, a decoding method where both the image and the messages can be estimated simultaneously is desirable. We propose a spread spectrum watermarking model with image restoration based on Bayes estimation. We therefore need to assume some prior probabilities.