Is hypnosis a valid alternative to spontaneous breathing general anesthesia for claustrophobic patients undergoing MR exams? A preliminary retrospective study

Background The purpose of our retrospective study was to assess the termination rate and the image quality of MR exams performed in claustrophobic patients under medical hypnosis, as compared to patients undergoing MR under spontaneous breathing general anesthesia. Methods Our study was approved by the ethics committee. The “hypnosis group” included consecutive patients that had previously interrupted an MR exam because of claustrophobia. The “control group” included patients undergoing MR under pharmacologic sedation. Two experienced radiologists assessed, randomly, independently and blinded the image quality of the two groups using a symmetrical Likert scale: 0 = non-diagnostic images; 1 = bad image quality; 2 = fair image quality; 3 = good image quality; 4 = very good image quality. Descriptive statistics was performed. Results Eighty patients were included, equally distributed between the two groups. Every patient was able to complete the MR exam. Ratings 3 and 4 represented the majority of ratings. Both readers rated the MR exams with score 3 or 4 in 66.25% (53/80) of MR exams. Only 5% (4/80) of MR exams were rated below score 2. The majority of the MR exams showed good or very good image quality. No significant difference was found in image quality between the two (p = 0.06) groups. The agreement between the two readers according to the k score was 0.105. Conclusions Medical hypnosis is a valid alternative to spontaneous breathing general anesthesia in patients unable to undergo MR due to claustrophobia, allowing good quality images.

T2*-weighted MRI produces viable fetal “Black-Bone” contrast with significant benefits when compared to current sequences

Objectives: Fetal “black bone” MRI could be useful in the diagnosis of various skeletal conditions during pregnancy without exposure to ionising radiation. Previously suggested Susceptibility-Weighted Imaging (SWI) is not available in the suggested form on all scanners leading to long imaging times that are susceptible to motion artefacts. We aimed to assess if an optimised T2*-weighted GRE sequence can provide viable “black bone” contrast and compared it to other sequences in the literature. Methods: A retrospective study was conducted on 17 patients who underwent fetal MRI. Patients were imaged with an optimised T2*-weighted GRE sequence, as well as at least one other “black-bone” sequence. Image quality was scored by four blinded observers on a five-point scale. Results: The T2*-weighted GRE sequence offered adequate to excellent image quality in 63% of cases and scored consistently higher than the three other comparison sequences when comparing images from the same patient. Image quality was found to be dependent on gestational age with good image quality achieved on almost all patients after 26 weeks. Conclusions: T2*-weighted GRE imaging can provide adequate fetal “black bone” contrast and performs at least as well as other sequences in the literature due to good bone to soft tissue contrast and minimal motion artefacts. Advances in knowledge: T2*-weighted fetal “black-bone” imaging can provide excellent bone to soft tissue contrast without using ionising radiation. It is as good as other “black bone” sequences and may be simpler and more widely implemented, with less motion artefacts.

A Novel Static CT System: The Design of Triple Planes CT and Its Multi-Energy Simulation Results

In this paper, we propose a novel static CT system: triple planes CT (TPCT) system. Three source-detector planes in different horizontal directions are placed in the system. Line-array carbon nanotube sources with different voltages and sandwich detectors are used. Compared to conventional cone-beam CT and common inverse-geometry CT, the TPCT enables fast scanning and six-energy imaging. 1-D U-Net is applied to correct the severe scatter caused by the special geometry. The limited-view problem is solved by the hybrid reconstruction algorithm. A Monte-Carlo simulation is performed on a thorax phantom. Both the reconstruction results and decomposition results have good image quality and show the feasibility of our proposed TPCT imaging system.

Research on Image Steganography Based on Sudoku Matrix

At present, the Sudoku matrix, turtle shell matrix, and octagonal matrix have been put forward according to the magic matrix-based data hiding methods. Moreover, the magic matrices to be designed depend on the size of the embedding capacity. In addition, by determining the classification of points of pixel pairs after applying a magic matrix and by determining the traversal area, the average peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) can be improved. Therefore, this topic intends to propose a data hiding method based on a 16 × 16 Sudoku matrix by using the 16 × 16 Sudoku matrix and extending it to a double-layer magic matrix. Low-cost data embedding methods are also studied, in order to improve the PSNR and maintain good image quality with the same embedding capacity.

Progress in Advanced Properties of Electrowetting Displays

Electrowetting display (EWD) has promising prospects in the electronic paper industry due to it having superior characteristics, such as the ability to provide a comfortable reading experience and quick response. However, in real applications, there are also problems related to dielectric deterioration, excess power consumption, optical instability and narrow color gamut etc. This paper reviewed the existing challenges and recent progress made in terms of improving the optical performance and reliability of EWD. First, the principle of electrowetting applied in small and confined configurations is introduced and the cause of the failure of the dielectric layer is analyzed. Then, the function of the pixel structures is described to avoid display defects. Next, electric signal modulations are compared in terms of achieving good image quality and optical stability. Lastly, the methods are presented for color panel realization. It was concluded that multi-layer dielectrics, three-dimensional pixel structures, proper electric frequency-and-amplitude modulation and an RGB color panel are expected to resolve the current limitations and contribute to designing advanced reflective displays.

Neural Denoising for Path Tracing of Medical Volumetric Data

In this paper, we transfer machine learning techniques previously applied to denoising surface-only Monte Carlo renderings to path-traced visualizations of medical volumetric data. In the domain of medical imaging, path-traced videos turned out to be an efficient means to visualize and understand internal structures, in particular for less experienced viewers such as students or patients. However, the computational demands for the rendering of high-quality path-traced videos are very high due to the large number of samples necessary for each pixel. To accelerate the process, we present a learning-based technique for denoising path-traced videos of volumetric data by increasing the sample count per pixel; both through spatial (integrating neighboring samples) and temporal filtering (reusing samples over time). Our approach uses a set of additional features and a loss function both specifically designed for the volumetric case. Furthermore, we present a novel network architecture tailored for our purpose, and introduce reprojection of samples to improve temporal stability and reuse samples over frames. As a result, we achieve good image quality even from severely undersampled input images, as visible in the teaser image.

PENERAPAN METODE FILTER GAUSSIAN DALAM PERBAIKAN KUALITAS CITRA SATELIT MODIS

One technology that uses satellite capabilities that can capture the image of an area is the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) sensor, the resulting image may experience noise (noise) this is caused when sending through the transmission line, the image is too dark or bright, the image less sharp or blurred. For that we need a method of noise reduction such as remote sensing through satellite imagery. The purpose of this study is to apply the Gaussian lowpass filter method in improving the quality of fashionable satellite imagery in order to have good image quality. The results of PSNR show the highest value on the MOD_04 image, with smoother image results, the resulting PSNR value is 19.7791 higher than other images, where the higher the PSNR value, the better the resulting image.

Implementation of Xor and Edge Identification Method in Steganography

In this paper, a novel imagesteganography algorithm that combines the strengths of edge detection and XOR coding, to conceal a secret message either in the spatial domain or an Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT) based transform domain of the cover image is presented. Edge detection and XOR coding are used in to conceal the secret message. Edge detection enables the identification of sharp edges in the cover image and this when embedding results in good image quality. Edge detection method presented here is capable of estimating the exact edge intensities for both the cover and stegno images (before and after embedding the message), which is essential when extracting the message. The XOR coding, on the other hand, is a simple, yet effective, process that helps in reducing differences between the cover and stegno images. Experimental results are observed using XILINX ISE and demonstrated that the proposed method has achieved better imperceptibility results than other popular steganography methods.

Combined Fully Contactless Finger and Hand Vein Capturing Device with a Corresponding Dataset

Vascular pattern based biometric recognition is gaining more and more attention, with a trend towards contactless acquisition. An important requirement for conducting research in vascular pattern recognition are available datasets. These datasets can be established using a suitable biometric capturing device. A sophisticated capturing device design is important for good image quality and, furthermore, at a decent recognition rate. We propose a novel contactless capturing device design, including technical details of its individual parts. Our capturing device is suitable for finger and hand vein image acquisition and is able to acquire palmar finger vein images using light transmission as well as palmar hand vein images using reflected light. An experimental evaluation using several well-established vein recognition schemes on a dataset acquired with the proposed capturing device confirms its good image quality and competitive recognition performance. This challenging dataset, which is one of the first publicly available contactless finger and hand vein datasets, is published as well.