Ishaq Al Salmi¹, Terence Menezes¹, Mohamed EL-Khodary¹, Sandra Monteiro², Ehsan A. Haider¹, Abdullah Alabousi¹

Canadian Journal of Urology, Vol.27, No.3, pp. 10220-10227, 2020

Abstract Introduction: The aim of this study was to evaluate the value of dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) imaging in multi-parametric prostate MRI (mpMRI) for the detection and staging of prostate cancer in comparison with T2W and DWI images alone in biparametric MRI (bpMRI) in treatment-naïve patients.
Materials and methods: One hundred consecutive patients who underwent a prostate MRI at our institution from June-August 2017, as well as a systematic ultrasound-guided prostate biopsy or prostatectomy, were included. Strictly following PI-RADS v2, the MRI studies were independently interpreted by a body radiologist and a body-imaging fellow on two different occasions… More >

Meera Radhakrishnan^1,*, Anandan Panneerselvam², Nandhagopal Nachimuthu³

Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing, Vol.26, No.6, pp. 1185-1199, 2020, DOI:10.32604/iasc.2020.012069 - 24 December 2020

Abstract Image segmentation is a crucial stage in the investigation of medical images and is predominantly implemented in various medical applications. In the case of investigating MRI brain images, the image segmentation is mainly employed to measure and visualize the anatomic structure of the brain that underwent modifications to delineate the regions. At present, distinct segmentation approaches with various degrees of accurateness and complexities are available. But, it needs tuning of various parameters to obtain optimal results. The tuning of parameters can be considered as an optimization issue using a similarity function in solution space. This… More >

Lei Chu^1,2, Yu Zhang^1,2, Long Qian^1,2, Dandan Zhu^1,2, Haijun Sun^1,2,*

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany, Vol.89, No.4, pp. 1035-1042, 2020, DOI:10.32604/phyton.2020.014506 - 09 November 2020

Abstract Biochar may affect the root morphology and nitrogen (N) use efficiency (NUE) of rice at seedling stage, which has not been clearly verified until now. To clarify it, we conducted a pot experiment regarding to two soil types (Hydragric Anthrosol and Haplic Acrisol), two biochar application rates (0.5 wt% and 1.5 wt %) and two rice varieties (common rice var. Xiushui134 and hybrid super rice var. Zhongkejiayou12-6) meanwhile. Seedling NUE of common rice Xiuhui134 was significantly increased (p < 0.05) by 78.2% in Hydragric Anthrosol and by 91.4% in Haplic Acrisol following biochar addition with 1.5… More >

Mo Hou^1,*, Weiyu Kevin Chiang^2,*, Weiqiang Hong¹, Maoyun Yang¹, Wenhua Yu^3,4

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.17, No.4, pp. 165-178, 2020, DOI:10.32604/mcb.2020.010805 - 20 October 2020

Abstract To achieve the image registration/fusion and perfect the quality of the integration, with dual modality contrast agent (DMCA), a novel multi-scale representation registration method between ultrasound imaging (US) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is presented in the paper, and how DMCA influence on registration accuracy is chiefly discussed. Owing to US’s intense speckle noise, it is a tremendous challenge to register US with any other modality images. How to improve the algorithms for US processing has become the bottleneck, and in the short term it is difficult to have a breakthrough. In that case, DMCA… More >

Shaowei Weng^{1, 2, *}, Yiyun Liu¹, Yunqing Shi³, Bo Ou⁴, Chunyu Zhang⁵, Cuiping Wang⁶

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.62, No.1, pp. 157-177, 2020, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2020.05681

Abstract This paper proposes a two-step general framework for reversible data hiding (RDH) schemes with controllable contrast enhancement. The first step aims at preserving visual perception as much as possible on the basis of achieving high embedding capacity (EC), while the second step is used for increasing image contrast. In the second step, some peak-pairs are utilized so that the histogram of pixel values is modified to perform histogram equalization (HE), which would lead to the image contrast enhancement. However, for HE, the utilization of some peak-pairs easily leads to over-enhanced image contrast when a large… More >

Anand V. Badri¹, Nikhil Waingankar², Kristin Edwards³, Alexander Kutikov¹, Rosaleen B. Parsons³, David Y. Chen¹, Marc C. Smaldone¹, Rosalia Viterbo¹, Richard E. Greenberg¹, Robert G. Uzzo¹

Canadian Journal of Urology, Vol.26, No.5, pp. 9916-9921, 2019

Abstract Introduction: Current radiographic guidelines suggest unenhanced renal lesions < 20 Hounsfield Units (HU) are overwhelmingly benign, requiring no further evaluation. We evaluate our experience with papillary renal cell carcinoma (pRCC) presenting with low pre-contrast attenuation and the relationship of attenuation with histologic pRCC subtype.
Materials and methods: We reviewed our institutional kidney cancer database for patients with pT1 or pT2 pRCC between 2003-2017. Tumors were categorized by papillary subtype by expert uropathologists. Preoperative CT images were analyzed at six regional tumor locations. Low, presumably benign, unenhanced median attenuation was defined as ≤ 20 HU. We calculated the… More >

Ahmet Elbir^1,∗, Hamza Osman Ilhan¹, Nizamettin Aydin¹

Computer Systems Science and Engineering, Vol.34, No.2, pp. 101-107, 2019, DOI:10.32604/csse.2019.34.101

Abstract The performances of the multivariate techniques are directly related to the variable selection process, which is time consuming and requires resources for testing each possible parameter to achieve the best results. Therefore, optimization methods for variable selection process have been proposed in the literature to find the optimal solution in short time by using less system resources. Contrast enhancement is the one of the most important and the parameter dependent image enhancement technique. In this study, two optimization methods are employed for the variable selection for the contrast enhancement technique. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) and More >

S. Deivalakshmi^*, P. Palanisamy¹, X. Z. Gao²

Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing, Vol.25, No.3, pp. 459-471, 2019, DOI:10.31209/2018.100000001

Abstract The main aim of this paper is to propose a new technique for enhancing the contrast of dark images using Dynamic Stochastic Resonance (DSR) and Multi Wavelet Transform (MWT), which is computationally more efficient than the conventional methods. In the work, for enhancing the contrast of dark images, the intrinsic noise (darkness) of dark images has been used. The proposed MWT-based DSR scheme (MWT-DSR) can yield better performances in terms of visual information and color preservation than already reported techniques. The desired output response is validated by the Relative Contrast Enhancement Factor (F), Perceptual Quality More >

Masashi Nishida, Shingo Kubo, Yuma Morishita, Kosuke Nishikawa, Kazuyuki Ikeda, Toshiyuki Itoi, Hajime Hosoi

Congenital Heart Disease, Vol.14, No.6, pp. 1087-1093, 2019, DOI:10.1111/chd.12853

Abstract Objective: This study aims to investigate the changes in renal function and levels of urinary biomarkers before and after cardiac angiography in children with congenital heart disease (CHD).
Setting: Children with CHD are at a risk for kidney injury during contrast exposure in cardiac angiography.
Outcome Measures: We measured urinary protein, albumin, N‐acetyl‐β‐D‐glucosaminidase (NAG), β2‐microglobulin (BMG), and liver‐type fatty acid‐binding protein (L‐FABP) levels, as well as serum creatinine and cystatin C levels, before and after cardiac angiography in 33 children with CHD.
Results: No significant decrease was noted in either the creatinine‐based or cystatin C‐based estimated glomerular filtration rate… More >

Xihua Liu¹, Changjun Ding², Xiaohua Su^2,*

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany, Vol.88, No.4, pp. 425-433, 2019, DOI:10.32604/phyton.2019.08285

Abstract The European black poplar (Populus nigra L.) has been used as a germplasm resource for the breeding of new poplar varieties around the world. The identification and screening of its high nitrogen use efficiency genotypes could enable the breeding of new resource-efficient poplar varieties. The accessions were screened using MALDI-TOF MS genotyping technology for ammonium transporter (AMT) and nitrate transporters (NRT) genes against phenotypic data for seedling height and ground diameter traits, in both low and high nitrogen environments. Allele re-sequencing of seven genes related to root development was carried out using the minisequencing method. By cluster… More >