The aim of this study was to assess whether acoustic structure quantification (ASQ) can differentiate normal from pathological thyroid parenchyma in patients with diffuse autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD). We evaluated 83 subjects (72 [87%] women and 11 [13%] men) aged 19 to 94 years with a mean age of 53 years. We performed a prospective study (from March 2011 to November 2014) that included 43 (52%) patients with chronic autoimmune thyroiditis (CAT), 22 (26%) patients with Graves' disease (GD), and 18 (22%) healthy volunteers. The ASQ values were significantly lower in normal subjects than in subjects with CAT and GD (p < 0.001). In contrast, the differences between the GD and the CAT patients (p = 0.23) were not statistically significant. The optimal cutoff ASQ value for which the sum of sensitivity and specificity was the highest for the prediction of diffuse thyroid pathology was 103 (95% confidence interval = [0.79, 0.95]). At this cutoff value, the sensitivity was 83% and the specificity was 89%. Our findings suggest that ASQ is a useful method for the assessment of the thyroid in patients with AITD.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0161734615580766 | DOI Listing |
Sci Rep
January 2025
School of Information and Communication Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan, 030051, China.
The Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) is a crucial power semiconductor device, and the integrity of its internal structure directly influences both its electrical performance and long-term reliability. However, the precise semantic segmentation of IGBT ultrasonic tomographic images poses several challenges, primarily due to high-density noise interference and visual distortion caused by target warping. To address these challenges, this paper constructs a dedicated IGBT ultrasonic tomography (IUT) dataset using Scanning Acoustic Microscopy (SAM) and proposes a lightweight Multi-Scale Fusion Network (LMFNet) aimed at improving segmentation accuracy and processing efficiency in ultrasonic images analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Phys Chem Lett
January 2025
School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, U.K.
Halide perovskites have attracted recent attention as thermoelectric materials due to their low thermal conductivity combined with good charge transport characteristics. The tin halide perovskites hold the highest within metal halide perovskites and offer lower toxicity than lead-containing perovskites that are well-known for photovoltaics. In this study, we partially substitute Sn (II) with Ge (II) to form mixed metal CsSnGeI perovskite thin films that have substantially improved stability, remaining in the black orthorhombic phase after hours of ambient air exposure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhys Rev Lett
December 2024
School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield, Hounsfield Road, Sheffield S3 7RH, United Kingdom.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2025
Department of Communication Science and Disorders, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces
January 2025
College of Material, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 311121, P. R. China.
Thermoelectric technology enables the direct and reversible conversion of heat into electrical energy without air pollution. Herein, the stability, electronic structure, and thermoelectric properties of methoxy-functionalized MC(OMe) (M = Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Y, Zr, Nb, Mo, Hf, Ta, and W) were systematically investigated using first-principles calculations and semiclassical Boltzmann transport theory. All MXenes, except those with M = Cr, Mo, and W, can be synthesized by substituting Cl- and Br-functionalized MXenes with deprotonated methanol, with stability governed by the M-O bond strength.
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