Alberto Olivero^1,*, Sofia Giudici², Alberto Caviglia¹, Erika Palagonia¹, Marco Nizzardo³, Alberto Quistini³, Andrea Grasso⁴, Ofir Maltzman¹, Marco Colombo⁵, Stefano Tappero¹, Elio Mazzone¹, Paolo Dell’Oglio¹, Aldo Massimo Bocciardi¹, Antonio Galfano¹, Silvia Secco¹

Canadian Journal of Urology, Vol.33, No.4, pp. 959-965, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cju.2026.076804 - 21 August 2026

Abstract Background: Minimally invasive surgical techniques (MISTs) are becoming an increasingly popular outpatient treatment option for lower urinary tract symptoms. Although generally well-tolerated, MISTs may cause periprocedural discomfort. Virtual reality devices (VRDs) have been shown to reduce patient-reported pain during several procedures. This study aims to evaluate whether the use of VRD during MISTs could improve perioperative endovenous sedation needs of a VRD during MISTs in a case-control design. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed patient data from MISTs performed between January 2024 and July 2025 at a single referral center (ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milan, Italy).… More >

Derrick Tsang¹, Ioannis Loufopoulos², Konstantinos Kapriniotis^1,*, Hannah Danbury², Ioannis Manolitsis³, Stamatios Katsimperis³, Senol Tonyali⁴, Patrick Juliebø-Jones⁵, Lazaros Tzelves², Neha Sihra⁶, James Green¹

Canadian Journal of Urology, Vol.33, No.4, pp. 771-782, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cju.2026.075625 - 21 August 2026

Abstract Ketamine is a potent anaesthetic drug that has been used for decades. Ketamine abuse is an increasingly common problem, particularly among young people. Over one quarter of ketamine users will have at least one bothersome urological symptom, with heavier and longer use leading to potentially irreversible damage to the lower and upper urinary tract. Hence, this study carried out a narrative review focusing on ketamine-induced uropathy pathophysiology, clinical presentation, and treatment options. It was found that ketamine uropathy is an inflammatory condition affecting predominantly the bladder but also the upper urinary tracts. A hypersensitivity reaction… More >

Nourah Fahad Janbi^*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.89, No.1, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2026.084270 - 13 August 2026

Abstract Automatic pain assessment from speech is an emerging approach for non-invasive and objective healthcare monitoring. However, many existing methods are evaluated on single datasets or under controlled conditions, which limits their robustness under diverse real-world conditions. This paper presents a lightweight, end-to-end deep learning framework for speech-based pain level classification that explicitly targets multi-dataset robustness assessment. The proposed approach uses log-Mel spectrograms with an EfficientNetV2B0 backbone to learn discriminative acoustic features without relying on handcrafted feature engineering or multi-stage pipelines. The model is evaluated on heterogeneous datasets, including clinical recordings, controlled experimental data, and a More >

Ruijia He¹, Yixin Hu², Jinze Liu³, Qixin Zhang⁴, Duo Peng⁵, Yanyan Chen^5,*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.88, No.3, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2026.083677 - 23 July 2026

Abstract Transthoracic Echocardiography (TTE) often suffers from a limited field of view (FoV), which may obscure peripheral cardiac structures and hinder comprehensive visual assessment. Although FoV extension can be formulated as outpainting, public studies on echocardiographic FoV outpainting remain scarce and are mainly represented by cGAN-based reconstruction methods such as echoGAN. However, in noisy ultrasound images with weak boundaries, the challenge is not only realistic texture synthesis, but also structural continuity across the observed–generated boundary. To address this issue, we propose a structure-aware diffusion framework for echocardiographic FoV outpainting. To the best of our knowledge, this More >

Sezgin Yeni^1,*, Hakan Kilicarslan², Bertan Tanrıbuyurdu², Levent Turan², Hatice Ortac³, Onur Kaygisiz²

Canadian Journal of Urology, Vol.33, No.3, pp. 635-642, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cju.2026.072974 - 29 June 2026

Abstract Objectives: Retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) has become an increasingly preferred minimally invasive option for the management of kidney stones. However, postoperative pain remains a major clinical concern that may adversely affect patient comfort and recovery. This study aimed to evaluate whether intraluminal administration of lidocaine at the end of RIRS could effectively reduce postoperative pain and analgesic requirements. Methods: A total of 61 patients who underwent RIRS between March and July 2024 were evaluated. Four patients were excluded due to residual stones, and five due to a history of cardiac arrhythmia, leaving 52 patients for… More >

Jaisa Kaufmann^1,*, Max Bouvette², Abdul Qadar¹, Dominic Frimberger¹, Adam Rensing¹, Bhalaajee Meenakshi-Sundaram¹

Canadian Journal of Urology, Vol.33, No.2, pp. 451-457, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cju.2026.074190 - 20 April 2026

Abstract Background: Pediatric opioid use has been associated with serious adverse effects, including persistent use and overdose. Recent studies have shown that opioid needs may be minimal following outpatient pediatric urologic surgery. Post-operative pain regimens following pediatric penile surgery are not standardized. This study aimed to identify current opioid prescribing practices following hypospadias repair. Methods: An online survey was administered to members of the Societies for Pediatric Urology, including eight questions surrounding physician demographics, hypospadias repair case volume, attitudes regarding opioid prescription in pediatric urology, and post-operative pain regimens. Responses were stratified for analysis. Results: A total… More >

Kai Li¹, Guolei Wang², Dunmin Lu^1,*, Yanbin Yao³, Zhiyong Li⁴

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.87, No.3, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2026.077651 - 09 April 2026

Abstract To address the need for improving the efficiency of spray painting large and complex curved surfaces, this study investigates the arm–rail coordinated spray painting operation method and proposes a robot workspace calculation method for efficient spray area partitioning. The steps for calculating the workspace under the constraints of the principal normal vector and the conical pose domain are introduced, along with an analysis of the robot’s forward and inverse kinematics. Simulation validation was conducted using a wind turbine blade as the target object. The results show that the workspace based on conical pose domain constraints More >

Saeid Sheikhi^*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.87, No.2, 2026, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2026.077788 - 12 March 2026

Abstract Metaheuristic optimization algorithms continue to be essential for solving complex real-world problems, yet existing methods often struggle with balancing exploration and exploitation across diverse problem landscapes. This paper proposes a novel nature-inspired metaheuristic optimization algorithm named the Painted Wolf Optimization (PWO) algorithm. The main inspiration for the PWO algorithm is the group behavior and hunting strategy of painted wolves, also known as African wild dogs in the wild, particularly their unique consensus-based voting rally mechanism, a behavior fundamentally distinct from the social dynamics of grey wolves. In this innovative process, pack members explore different areas… More >

Connor M. Forbes^1,*, Ben H. Chew¹, K.F. Victor Wong¹, Runhan Ren¹, Yuanyuan Ji², Alexander P. Glaser³, Kazumi Taguchi⁴, Amy E. Krambeck⁵, Marcelino E. Rivera⁶, Ojas Shah⁷, Edouard Tariel⁸, Channa Amarasekera⁵, Shuzo Hamamoto⁴, Dirk Lange¹, Wilson R. Molina⁹, John J. Knoedler¹⁰, Mitchell R. Humphreys¹¹, Karen L. Stern,¹¹

Canadian Journal of Urology, Vol.32, No.4, pp. 335-344, 2025, DOI:10.32604/cju.2025.063577 - 29 August 2025

Abstract Objectives: Previous studies have shown conflicting results concerning the optimal duration of ureteral stenting after endourologic treatment of stone disease, its effect on patient comfort, and the necessity for emergent, unscheduled care. This study assessed the impact of stent duration, sex, and other patient-associated factors on reported pain scores using a large, international prospective registry. Methods: A prospective observational patient registry on ureteral stents from 10 institutions in 4 countries (United States, Canada, France, and Japan) from 2020–2023 was assessed. The primary outcome was Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) pain intensity scores administered on… More >

Rongrong Gong^1,#, Tingxian Zhang^2,#, Yawen Wei², Dengyong Zhang², Yan Li^3,*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.85, No.1, pp. 1221-1234, 2025, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2025.066842 - 29 August 2025

Abstract Image inpainting refers to synthesizing missing content in an image based on known information to restore occluded or damaged regions, which is a typical manifestation of this trend. With the increasing complexity of image in tasks and the growth of data scale, existing deep learning methods still have some limitations. For example, they lack the ability to capture long-range dependencies and their performance in handling multi-scale image structures is suboptimal. To solve this problem, the paper proposes an image inpainting method based on the parallel dual-branch learnable Transformer network. The encoder of the proposed model More >