Facilitating phenotyping from clinical texts: the medkit library.

Summary: Phenotyping consists in applying algorithms to identify individuals associated with a specific, potentially complex, trait or condition, typically out of a collection of Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Because a lot of the clinical information of EHRs are lying in texts, phenotyping from text takes an important role in studies that rely on the secondary use of EHRs. However, the heterogeneity and highly specialized aspect of both the content and form of clinical texts makes this task particularly tedious, and is the source of time and cost constraints in observational studies.

Comparing NER Approaches on French Clinical Text, with Easy-to-Reuse Pipelines.

The task of Named Entity Recognition (NER) is central for leveraging the content of clinical texts in observational studies. Indeed, texts contain a large part of the information available in Electronic Health Records (EHRs). However, clinical texts are highly heterogeneous between healthcare services and institutions, between countries and languages, making it hard to predict how existing tools may perform on a particular corpus.

Severe night sweating treated by oxybutynin.

Unlabelled: Sleep hyperhidrosis is defined as profuse nocturnal sweating that disrupts sleep. Although the mechanism is unknown, some cases are secondary to hot flushes during the menopausal period, medical, mental and sleep disorders, and medication, while dysregulation of thermoregulation during sleep is suspected in primary cases. We present the case of a woman with severe primary sleep hyperhidrosis, occurring nightly for 23 years, which definitively resolved after brief treatment with oxybutynin (a muscarinic receptor-blocking anticholinergic).

Clinical assessment of scannographic markers for sarcopenia in lung transplant candidates.

Introduction: The selection of patients for lung transplantation is difficult. An aspect of the patient's general condition and frailty can be assessed by measuring the surface area of certain muscles on CT. Indeed, sarcopenia, assessed by measuring the area of psoas muscles on scannographic sections has already been shown to be associated with poor outcomes in lung transplant and other major surgeries and could thus be helpful to evaluate candidates to lung transplant.

Clinica: An Open-Source Software Platform for Reproducible Clinical Neuroscience Studies.

We present Clinica (www.clinica.run), an open-source software platform designed to make clinical neuroscience studies easier and more reproducible.

A strange New Year's Eve: triggers in Kleine-Levin syndrome.

Kleine-Levin syndrome is a rare neurological disease of unknown cause beginning typically during adolescence, characterized by remittent-relapsing episodes of severe hypersomnia associated with cognitive and behavioral disturbances. Triggering factors at Kleine-Levin syndrome onset include infection, sleep deprivation, as well as alcohol, drug, and substance intake. A young woman had 6 episodes over 2 years, including hypersomnia, confusion, derealization, cognitive impairment, anxiety, feeling of being scrutinized, anorexia (and sweet craving once) but no hypersexuality.

A Self-Setting Hydrogel of Silylated Chitosan and Cellulose for the Repair of Osteochondral Defects: From Characterization to Preclinical Evaluation in Dogs.

Articular cartilage (AC) may be affected by many injuries including traumatic lesions that predispose to osteoarthritis. Currently there is no efficient cure for cartilage lesions. In that respect, new strategies for regenerating AC are contemplated with interest.

Evaluating reinforcement learning agents for anatomical landmark detection.

Automatic detection of anatomical landmarks is an important step for a wide range of applications in medical image analysis. Manual annotation of landmarks is a tedious task and prone to observer errors. In this paper, we evaluate novel deep reinforcement learning (RL) strategies to train agents that can precisely and robustly localize target landmarks in medical scans.

Automated cardiovascular magnetic resonance image analysis with fully convolutional networks.

Background: Cardiovascular resonance (CMR) imaging is a standard imaging modality for assessing cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), the leading cause of death globally. CMR enables accurate quantification of the cardiac chamber volume, ejection fraction and myocardial mass, providing information for diagnosis and monitoring of CVDs. However, for years, clinicians have been relying on manual approaches for CMR image analysis, which is time consuming and prone to subjective errors.

Early and Midlife Predictors of Wisdom and Subjective Well-Being in Old Age.

Objectives: We explored whether wisdom and well-being in old age are the result of early personality traits related to personality growth or personality adjustment, respectively, or successful human development as outlined by Erikson's stage theory and the life course paradigm.

Method: Structural equation models were applied to analyze 60-year longitudinal data of 98 white male Harvard graduates born between 1915 and 1924. Different sets of judges rated the men's childhood and adolescence, early adult personality, and midlife generativity.

Automated Detection of Motion Artefacts in MR Imaging Using Decision Forests.

The acquisition of a Magnetic Resonance (MR) scan usually takes longer than subjects can remain still. Movement of the subject such as bulk patient motion or respiratory motion degrades the image quality and its diagnostic value by producing image artefacts like ghosting, blurring, and smearing. This work focuses on the effect of motion on the reconstructed slices and the detection of motion artefacts in the reconstruction by using a supervised learning approach based on random decision forests.

Development of Adaptive Coping From Mid to Late Life: A 70-Year Longitudinal Study of Defense Maturity and Its Psychosocial Correlates.

The present study examines changes in defense maturity from mid to late life using data from an over 70-year longitudinal study. A sample of 72 men was followed beginning in late adolescence. Participants' childhoods were coded for emotional warmth.

Midlife Eriksonian psychosocial development: Setting the stage for late-life cognitive and emotional health.

Erikson's (1950) model of adult psychosocial development outlines the significance of successful involvement within one's relationships, work, and community for healthy aging. He theorized that the consequences of not meeting developmental challenges included stagnation and emotional despair. Drawing on this model, the present study uses prospective longitudinal data to examine how the quality of assessed Eriksonian psychosocial development in midlife relates to late-life cognitive and emotional functioning.

On the concept of sloped motion for free-floating wave energy converters.

A free-floating wave energy converter (WEC) concept whose power take-off (PTO) system reacts against water inertia is investigated herein. The main focus is the impact of inclining the PTO direction on the system performance. The study is based on a numerical model whose formulation is first derived in detail.

Potential influence of Type A personality on plasma C-reactive protein levels in people with diabetes.

Aim: Type A personality, although classically known as a factor linked to increased vascular risk, has recently been associated with increased survival in patients with diabetes. As low-grade inflammation predicts a poor outcome, the present study explored the potential associations between Type A and plasma levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) in diabetes.

Methods: Type A personality was assessed by the Bortner questionnaire in people with diabetes.

Childhood adversity, midlife generativity, and later life well-being.

Objectives: Prior studies confirm that after experiencing childhood adversity, resilient adults can recover and engage in generative growth. This study explored the long-term effects of childhood adversity (assessed as harsh parenting and/or childhood poverty) on successful aging for individuals who either achieved or failed to achieve Erikson's psychosocial developmental stage of generativity in midlife.

Method: The study utilized a sample of 636 men from the Harvard Sample and Inner City Cohort of the 73-year longitudinal Study of Adult Development.

Childhood Environment as a Predictor of Perceived Health Status in Late Life.

Prior studies have shown that perceived health status is a consistent and reliable predictor of morbidity and mortality. Because perceived health status and objective health are not highly correlated, we sought to identify additional factors that shape self-perceptions of health. Research suggests that childhood experience is an important predictor of health in adulthood, but most studies are retrospective.

Antecedents of intact cognition and dementia at age 90 years: a prospective study.

Objectives: This study aimed to examine the possible antecedents of both dementia and sustained intact cognition at age 90 years among men who underwent a prospective, multidisciplinary assessment from ages 19 to 90 years, with little attrition.

Methods: We conducted a prospective 20-year reassessment of 196 (out of 268) former Harvard college sophomores who survived until age 70 years. Since 1939, the study gathered measurements of childhood environment, dominant personality traits, objective mental and physical health over time, smoking in pack-years, alcohol abuse, and depression.

Compressive manifold learning: estimating one-dimensional respiratory motion directly from undersampled k-space data.

Purpose: To present and validate a manifold learning (ML)-based method that estimates the respiratory signal directly from undersampled k-space data and that can be applied for respiratory self-gated liver MRI.

Methods: ML methods embed high-dimensional space data in a low-dimensional space while preserving their characteristic properties. These methods have been used to estimate one-dimensional respiratory motion (low-dimensional manifold) from a set of high-dimensional free-breathing abdominal MR images.

Psychiatry, religion, positive emotions and spirituality.

This paper proposes that eight positive emotions: awe, love/attachment, trust/faith, compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, joy and hope constitute what we mean by spirituality. These emotions have been grossly ignored by psychiatry. The two sciences that I shall employ to demonstrate this definition of spirituality will be ethology and neuroscience.

Adaptive midlife defense mechanisms and late-life health.

A growing body of research suggests that personality characteristics relate to physical health; however, this relation ship has primarily been tested in cross-sectional studies that have not followed the participants into old age. The present study utilizes data from a 70-year longitudinal study to prospectively examine the relationship between the adaptive defense mechanisms in midlife and objectively assessed physical health in late life. In addition to examining the direct effect, we test whether social support mediates this relation ship.

Retrospective Rigid Motion Correction in k-Space for Segmented Radial MRI.

Motion occurring during magnetic resonance imaging acquisition is a major factor of image quality degradation. Self-navigation can help reduce artefacts by estimating motion from the acquired data to enable motion correction. Popular self-navigation techniques rely on the availability of a fully-sampled motion-free reference to register the motion corrupted data with.

Whole-heart coronary MRA with 3D affine motion correction using 3D image-based navigation.

Purpose: Robust motion correction is necessary to minimize respiratory motion artefacts in coronary MR angiography (CMRA). The state-of-the-art method uses a 1D feet-head translational motion correction approach, and data acquisition is limited to a small window in the respiratory cycle, which prolongs the scan by a factor of 2-3. The purpose of this work was to implement 3D affine motion correction for Cartesian whole-heart CMRA using a 3D navigator (3D-NAV) to allow for data acquisition throughout the whole respiratory cycle.