Letters to the Editor

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-145
Author(s):  
Lachlan Ch De Crespigny ◽  
Hugh P. Robinson

We read with interest the report which suggested that the diagnosis of cerebroventricular hemorrhage ([CVH] including both subependymal [SEH] and intraventricular) with real time ultrasound was unreliable.1 Ultrasound, when compared with computed tomography scans, had a 35% false-positive rate and a 21% false-negative rate. In our institution over a 12-month period more than 200 premature babies have been examined (ADR real time linear array scanner with a 7-MHz transducer).

2006 ◽  
Vol 69 (12) ◽  
pp. 2896-2901 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANGELIKA NOTZON ◽  
REINER HELMUTH ◽  
JOHANN BAUER

The aim of this study was the comparison of an immunomagnetic separation (IMS)–real-time PCR assay for the detection of Salmonella with the cultural reference method according to §35 of the German Law on Food and Commodities (LMBG, L 00.00.20:1998). The IMS–real-time PCR assay includes a nonselective preenrichment step, an IMS, DNA extraction, as well as DNA purification followed by hybridization probe–based real-time PCR analysis. An accurate comparability was achieved, because both methods analyzed the same preenrichment. The evaluation was carried out using both artificially and naturally contaminated meat samples. The IMS–real-time PCR assay provides a result after 12 to 13 h. Compared with the reference method and regarding artificially contaminated meat samples, the IMS–real-time PCR assay achieved a specificity of 80% (false-positive rate of 20%) and a sensitivity of 100% (false-negative rate of 0%). The relative accuracy was 94%. The detection limit of both methods was 10 CFU/25 g. The concordance indexκ defines the statistical accordance, was 0.85 and indicated the agreement of both methods on statistical criteria. Compared to the reference method and analyzing naturally contaminated meat samples (n = 491), the IMS–real-time PCR assay showed a specificity of 99.3% (false-positive rate of 0.7%) and a sensitivity of 83.7% (false-negative rate of 16.3%). The relative accuracy was 98%. The concordance index κ had a value of 0.87 and highlighted the statistical agreement of both methods. In conclusion, the IMS–real-time PCR assay is suitable as specific, sensitive, and rapid screening method for the detection of Salmonella from meat.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Chenwei Gao ◽  
Dakui Xu ◽  
Chenxi Sun

In order to explore the application of musculoskeletal ultrasound (MSKUS) in real-time dynamic detection of Luschka joint hyperplasia of cervical vertebrae, a total of 80 patients who were diagnosed as cervical spondylosis of vertebral artery type and underwent musculoskeletal ultrasound and three-dimensional computed tomography angiograph (3D-CTA) examination at a designated hospital by this study from December 2016 to December 2018 were selected as study subjects. Taking 3D-CTA as gold standard, the results of MSKUS and 3D-CTA were compared and their correlation and consistency analysis were performed; the sensitivity, specificity, false positive rate, false negative rate and diagnostic compliance rate of MSKUS were calculated for evaluating the lateral hyperplasia of Luschka joint; the Kappa values were used to compare the test results' consistency, which were divided into three categories of high consistency, general consistency, and poor consistency to evaluate the lateral hyperplasia of Luschka joint. The results show that the sensitivity, specificity, false positive rate, false negative rate, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic coincidence rate of MSKUS in evaluating the lateral hyperplasia of Luschka joint were 87.34%, 95.78%, 2.49%, 12.45%, 93.02%, 92.18%, and 94.67%, respectively; there was no significantly statistical difference between the MSKUS and 3D-CTA evaluation results (χ2 = 0.34, P > 0.05) and they have higher correlation (K = 0.82) and excellent consistency (K = 0.769). Therefore, it is concluded that the MSKUS has a good validity in evaluating the lateral hyperplasia of cervical vertebrae joints. The study results of this paper provide a reference for further research on the application of MSKUS in real-time dynamic detection of Luschka joint hyperplasia of cervical vertebrae.


1989 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandro Sulfaro ◽  
Francesco Querin ◽  
Luigi Barzan ◽  
Mario Lutman ◽  
Roberto Comoretto ◽  
...  

Sixty-six whole-organ sectioned laryngopharyngectomy specimens removed for cancer during a seven-year period were uniformly examined to determine the accuracy of preoperative high resolution computerized tomography (CT) for detection of cartilaginous involvement. Our results indicate that CT has a high overall specificity (88.2%) but a low sensitivity (47.1 %); we observed a high false-negative rate (26.5%) and a fairly low false-positive rate (5.9%). Massive cartilage destruction was easily assessed by CT, whereas both small macroscopic and microscopic neoplastic foci of cartilaginous invasion were missed on CT scans. Moreover, false-positive cases were mainly due to proximity of the tumor to the cartilage. Clinical implications of these results are discussed.


Biomolecules ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 809
Author(s):  
Miguel Carrasco ◽  
Patricio Toledo ◽  
Nicole D. Tischler

Segmentation is one of the most important stages in the 3D reconstruction of macromolecule structures in cryo-electron microscopy. Due to the variability of macromolecules and the low signal-to-noise ratio of the structures present, there is no generally satisfactory solution to this process. This work proposes a new unsupervised particle picking and segmentation algorithm based on the composition of two well-known image filters: Anisotropic (Perona–Malik) diffusion and non-negative matrix factorization. This study focused on keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) macromolecules which offer both a top view and a side view. Our proposal was able to detect both types of views and separate them automatically. In our experiments, we used 30 images from the KLH dataset of 680 positive classified regions. The true positive rate was 95.1% for top views and 77.8% for side views. The false negative rate was 14.3%. Although the false positive rate was high at 21.8%, it can be lowered with a supervised classification technique.


1974 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Gerson

To assess the validity and reliability of the Hooper Visual Organization Test, 68 Ss, of whom 16 were clinically and psychometrically determined to be suffering from organic brain damage, 19 had functional disorders, and 33 were without organic or functional disorders (normal), were given the test. The instrument was shown to be reliable ( r = .80), however, clear-cut discriminations between groups were not achieved. There were significant differences in scores of normal and damaged groups, functional and damaged Ss, but not functional and normal Ss. The qualitative signs said to aid in differentiations were totally absent from all protocols. Performance was affected in part by IQ and other aspects of recognition of meaning. There was a 19% false negative rate for the functionals and a 51% false positive rate for normals. The conclusion was that this device is of dubious clinical value.


Author(s):  
Harikrishna Mulam ◽  
Malini Mudigonda

Many research works are in progress in classification of the eye movements using the electrooculography signals and employing them to control the human–computer interface systems. This article introduces a new model for recognizing various eye movements using electrooculography signals with the help of empirical mean curve decomposition and multiwavelet transformation. Furthermore, this article also adopts a principal component analysis algorithm to reduce the dimension of electrooculography signals. Accordingly, the dimensionally reduced decomposed signal is provided to the neural network classifier for classifying the electrooculography signals, along with this, the weight of the neural network is fine-tuned with the assistance of the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm. Finally, the proposed method is compared with the existing methods and it is observed that the proposed methodology gives the better performance in correspondence with accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, precision, false positive rate, false negative rate, negative predictive value, false discovery rate, F1 score, and Mathews correlation coefficient.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Zhao ◽  
Zhaobin Chang ◽  
Guangbin Bao ◽  
Xiangyan Zeng

Malicious domain name attacks have become a serious issue for Internet security. In this study, a malicious domain names detection algorithm based on N-Gram is proposed. The top 100,000 domain names in Alexa 2013 are used in the N-Gram method. Each domain name excluding the top-level domain is segmented into substrings according to its domain level with the lengths of 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. The substring set of the 100,000 domain names is established, and the weight value of a substring is calculated according to its occurrence number in the substring set. To detect a malicious attack, the domain name is also segmented by the N-Gram method and its reputation value is calculated based on the weight values of its substrings. Finally, the judgment of whether the domain name is malicious is made by thresholding. In the experiments on Alexa 2017 and Malware domain list, the proposed detection algorithm yielded an accuracy rate of 94.04%, a false negative rate of 7.42%, and a false positive rate of 6.14%. The time complexity is lower than other popular malicious domain names detection algorithms.


2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (18_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1552-1552
Author(s):  
P. Manente ◽  
G. Vicario ◽  
E. Scelzi ◽  
L. Sartor ◽  
L. Nicolardi ◽  
...  

1552 Background: The major techniques used to diagnose breast abnormality has been for many years fine-needle aspiration (FNA) cytology and core needle biopsy (CNB) and more recently vacuum-assisted core biopsy (VACB). These techniques are accurate and allow definitive therapeutic surgery. The aim of our study was to detemine whether cytology/histologic findings mach histologic findings at excision. Methods: In our Institution, between January 2004 and June 2006, 43,138 mammographic exams were performed. 1,012 patients had patological lesions at mammography: 617 FNA cytology ( C due to European guidelines for breast cancer screening assessment) and 395 CNB/VACB (B) were performed. Patients with respectively suspicious and malignant FNA cytology (C4 and C5) and respectively uncertain malignant potential, suspicious and malignant histology (B3, B4 and B5) underwent to surgery. Results: The number of cancer identified by FNA cytology was 158 and the number of cancer identified by CNB/VACB was 253. The correlation of preoparative citology/histology with definitive histology had showed: false negative rate respectively 0.79% for histology (B) and 3.16% for cytology (C). False positive rate was respectively 0.4% for B and 0.63 for C. Complete sensitivity was 98.2% for B and 89.87% for C. Absolute sensitivity was 90.51% for B and 76.58% for C. Conclusions: Our data demostrated very high performance of diagnostic preoperative procedures due to multidisciplinary approach between the radiologists, the clinicians and the pathologists. No significant financial relationships to disclose.


2008 ◽  
Vol 71 (12) ◽  
pp. 2442-2447 ◽  
Author(s):  
INGRID BOESCHE TOMAZELLI ◽  
JOSINETE BARROS de FREITAS ◽  
LEANIA MARIA FABBI ◽  
TEREZINHA AGNESE FILIPINI ◽  
CLÁUDIA MARIA da SILVA ◽  
...  

A two-stage study compared the BAX system PCR method with the reference culture method used by the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture and Food Supply for the detection of Salmonella in food, water, and environmental samples. In stage 1, fish matrix samples (n = 258) were spiked at several levels with Salmonella and a combination of Salmonella and non-Salmonella competitive organisms. Replicates were analyzed by the BAX system PCR method and the reference method with comparable results (sensitivity ≥ 97.5%, specificity ≥ 83.3%) from both methods at the limit of detection. In stage 2, a total of 1,988 samples with 70 product types were analyzed with both methods. Five laboratories were involved in this study, and the samples used were from routine analyses. The BAX system PCR method was shown to be comparable to the reference method, with a limit of detection of 1.0 to 2.0 CFU/25 g of sample. Analysis of the results obtained in stage 2 and in the combination of stages 1 and 2 for the BAX system showed the following performance: sensitivity ≥ 99.0%, specificity ≥ 97.2%, false-negative rate ≤ 1.1%, and false-positive rate ≤ 2.8%. Therefore, the BAX system appears to be equivalent to the reference method, with ≥ 97.3% agreement.


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