A pyramid approach to subpixel registration based on intensity.

We present an automatic subpixel registration algorithm that minimizes the mean square intensity difference between a reference and a test data set, which can be either images (two-dimensional) or volumes (three-dimensional). It uses an explicit spline representation of the images in conjunction with spline processing, and is based on a coarse-to-fine iterative strategy (pyramid approach). The minimization is performed according to a new variation (ML*) of the Marquardt-Levenberg algorithm for nonlinear least-square optimization.

Certainty and mortality prediction in critically ill children.

Objectives: The objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between a physician's subjective mortality prediction and the level of confidence with which that mortality prediction is made.

Design And Participants: The study is a prospective cohort of patients less than 18 years of age admitted to a tertiary Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at a University Children's Hospital with a minimum length of ICU stay of 10 h. Paediatric ICU attending physicians and fellows provided mortality risk predictions and the level of confidence associated with these predictions on consecutive patients at the time of multidisciplinary rounds within 24 hours of admission to the paediatric ICU.

Relevance of diagnostic diversity and patient volumes for quality and length of stay in pediatric intensive care units.

Objective: Investigation of associations of the diagnostic diversity and volumes with efficiency and quality of care.

Design: Prospective observational study.

Setting: Thirty-two pediatric intensive care units (PICUs), 16 selected by random cluster sampling, and 16 volunteering.

Recurrent post-partum seizures after epidural blood patch.

There are many causes for headaches after childbirth. Even though postdural puncture headache (PDPH) has to be considered in a woman with a history of difficult epidural anaesthesia, pre-eclampsia should always be excluded as an important differential diagnosis. We report a case with signs of late-onset pre-eclampsia where administration of an epidural blood patch (EBP) was associated with eclampsia.

[Atkinson's retrobulbar anesthesia. A quality control study].

Purpose Of The Study: Recognized local and systemic complications of retrobulbar anaesthesia (RA) are well known. The purpose of this study was to determine which clinical signs predict the success of the RA technique.

Methods: We prospectively investigated 500 consecutive patients scheduled for elective eye surgery for cataracts and for vitreoretinal procedures.