Ex vivo Fusion Confocal Microscopy of Colorectal Polyps: A Fast Turnaround Time of Pathological Diagnosis

<b><i>Background:</i></b> Colorectal cancer screening programs have accomplished a mortality reduction from the disease but have created bottlenecks in endoscopy units and pathology departments. We aimed to explore the feasibility of ex vivo fusion confocal microscopy (FuCM) to improve the histopathology diagnostic efficiency and reduce laboratory workload. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> Consecutive fresh polyps removed at colonoscopy were scanned using ex vivo FuCM, then went through histopathologic workout and hematoxylin and eosin (H&amp;E) diagnosis. Two pathologists blinded to H&amp;E diagnosis made a diagnosis based on FuCM scanned images. <b><i>Results:</i></b> Thirty-six fresh polyps from 22 patients were diagnosed with FuCM and H&amp;E. Diagnostic agreement between H&amp;E and FuCM was 97.2% (kappa = 0.96) for pathologist #1 and 91.7% (kappa = 0.87) for pathologist #2. Diagnostic performance concordance between FuCM and H&amp;E to discern adenomatous from nonadenomatous polyps was 100% (kappa = 1) for pathologist #1 and 97.2% (kappa = 0.94) for pathologist #2. Global interobserver agreement was 94.44% (kappa = 0.91) and kappa = 0.94 to distinguish adenomatous from nonadenomatous polyps. <b><i>Conclusions:</i></b> Ex vivo FuCM shows an excellent correlation with standard H&amp;E for the diagnosis of colorectal polyps. The clinical direct benefit for patients, pathologists, and endoscopists allows adapting personalized surveillance protocols after colonoscopy and a workload decrease in pathology departments.

Assessing the Reliability of Commercially Available Point of Care in Various Clinical Fields

a Updated and precise molecular diagnostics are essential in disease identification, treatment and management. Conventional technologies are limited to laboratories, which are expensive, require moderate to great volumes of biological fluids and generally create great discomfort among patients. This review discusses some key features of commercially available point of care (POC) devices, such as time to provide results, accuracy and imprecision, in several medical and veterinary fields. We searched Pubmed/Medline using the keywords “point” “of” “care” “device”, selected papers from 1984 to 2019 on the basis of their content and summarized the features in tables. Fast turnaround time and overall good reliability, in terms of accuracy and imprecision, were observed for most of POCs included in the research. POC devices are particularly useful for clinicians since they hold the potential to deliver rapid and accurate results in an inexpensive and less invasive way with an overall improvement of patients' quality of life in terms of time spent at the point-of-care and sample volume withdrawn. These features gain great relevance also in the veterinary practice, where patients’ compliance is generally poor, available sample volumes are quite far from the human ones and analysis costs are higher.

Nutrient Deprivation-Associated Changes in Green Microalga Coelastrum sp. TISTR 9501RE Enhanced Potent Antioxidant Carotenoids

The utilization of microalgae as a source of carotenoid productions has gained increasing popularity due to its advantages, such as a relatively fast turnaround time. In this study, a newly discovered Coelastrum sp. TISTR 9501RE was characterized and investigated for its taxonomical identity and carotenoid profile. To the best of our knowledge, this report was the first to fully investigate the carotenoid profiles in a microalga of the genus Coelastrum. Upon use of limited nutrients as a stress condition, the strain was able to produce astaxanthin, canthaxanthin, and lutein, as the major carotenoid components. Additionally, the carotenoid esters were found to be all astaxanthin derivatives, and β-carotene was not significantly present under this stress condition. Importantly, we also demonstrated that this practical stress condition could be combined with simple growing factors, such as ambient sunlight and temperature, to achieve even more focused carotenoid profiles, i.e., increased overall amounts of the aforementioned carotenoids with fewer minor components and chlorophylls. In addition, this green microalga was capable of tolerating a wide range of salinity. Therefore, this study paved the way for more investigations and developments on this fascinating strain, which will be reported in due course.

An Enhancement of One Time Pad Based on Monoalphabeth Caesar Cipher to Secure Grayscale Image

Image is an object that has been used by various people since long ago. Utilization of these images evolve in line with advances in technology. Image in this information technology era is not only in a physical form, there is also a form of so-called digital image. Many people use digital images for personal use, so prone to be manipulated by others. Cryptographic technique, such as Caesar Cipher and OTP is a security techniques that can be applied to the digital image to avoid manipulation or theft of data image. The result is, an image can be read only by the sender and the recipient's image alone. Combined the two algorithms have fast turnaround time, up to 0.017791 seconds for the image to the size of 512x341 and 0.032302 seconds for the image to the size of 768x512. In addition, the resulting image has a very low degree of similarity, with the highest PSNR value obtained is 6.8653 dB. It can be concluded that the combined algorithm and OTP Caesar Cipher algorithm is fast and difficult to solve.

A Detailed Analysis Scheme to Interpret Multiple Photon Emissions Micrograph for Improved Diagnostic Resolution on Open Defects

Photon Emission Microscopy is the most widely used mainstream defect isolation technique in failure analysis labs. It is easy to perform and has a fast turnaround time for results. However, interpreting a photon emission micrograph to postulate the suspected defect site accurately is challenging when there are multiple abnormal hotspots and driving nets involved. This is commonly encountered in dynamic emission micrographs that are caused by open defects in digital logic. This paper presents a methodology incorporating layout-aware trace analysis and post schematic extraction with test bench analysis to enhance the diagnostic resolution on the suspected defective net(s).

Evaluation of NGAL Test™, a fully-automated neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) immunoassay on Beckman Coulter AU 5822

The neutrophil gelatinase associated lipocalin (NGAL) has been identified as the most promising biomarker of acute kidney injury (AKI). This study was aimed to evaluate a NGAL immunoassay on Beckman Coulter AU 5822.NGAL Test™ (BioPorto Diagnostics A/S) is a particle-enhanced turbidimetric immunoassay. The within-and between-run imprecision were assessed on three urine samples. The linearity was assessed by serially diluting two urine samples with low and high NGAL concentration. The comparison study was performed with Abbott ARCHITECT NGAL, on 70 urine samples.The within-run imprecision was comprised between 1.0% and 2.3%, whereas the between-run imprecision was between 1.2% and 2.0%. The linearity was excellent in the range between 18 ng/mL and 790 ng/mL (r=1.000; p<0.001). A highly significant agreement was observed between NGAL Test™ on Beckman Coulter AU5822 and Abbott ARCHITECT NGAL (r=0.925; p<0.001), although the method exhibited a bias of +65%. Excellent sensitivity and specificity against the ARCHITECT values were found at 200 ng/mL.This analytical evaluation attests that the NGAL Test™ has several technical and analytical advantages, including no manual pretreatment, low volume of sample (i.e., 3 μL), fast turnaround time (approx. 10 min), low imprecision, wide dynamic range, optimal linearity.