Design and implementation for portable ultrasound-aided breast cancer screening system / 生物医学工程学杂志

Early screening is an important means to reduce breast cancer mortality. In order to solve the problem of low breast cancer screening rates caused by limited medical resources in remote and impoverished areas, this paper designs a breast cancer screening system aided with portable ultrasound Clarius. The system automatically segments the tumor area of the B-ultrasound image on the mobile terminal and uses the ultrasound radio frequency data on the cloud server to automatically classify the benign and malignant tumors. Experimental results in this study show that the accuracy of breast tumor segmentation reaches 98%, and the accuracy of benign and malignant classification reaches 82%, and the system is accurate and reliable. The system is easy to set up and operate, which is convenient for patients in remote and poor areas to carry out early breast cancer screening. It is beneficial to objectively diagnose disease, and it is the first time for the domestic breast cancer auxiliary screening system on the mobile terminal.

Detection of carotid intima and media thicknesses based on ultrasound B-mode images clustered with Gaussian mixture model / 生物医学工程学杂志

In clinic, intima and media thickness are the main indicators for evaluating the development of atherosclerosis. At present, these indicators are measured by professional doctors manually marking the boundaries of the inner and media on B-mode images, which is complicated, time-consuming and affected by many artificial factors. A grayscale threshold method based on Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) clustering is therefore proposed to detect the intima and media thickness in carotid arteries from B-mode images in this paper. Firstly, the B-mode images are clustered based on the GMM, and the boundary between the intima and media of the vessel wall is then detected by the gray threshold method, and finally the thickness of the two is measured. Compared with the measurement technique using the gray threshold method directly, the clustering of B-mode images of carotid artery solves the problem of gray boundary blurring of inner and middle membrane, thereby improving the stability and detection accuracy of the gray threshold method. In the clinical trials of 120 healthy carotid arteries, means of 4 manual measurements obtained by two experts are used as reference values. Experimental results show that the normalized root mean square errors (NRMSEs) of the estimated intima and media thickness after GMM clustering were 0.104 7 ± 0.076 2 and 0.097 4 ± 0.068 3, respectively. Compared with the results of the direct gray threshold estimation, means of NRMSEs are reduced by 19.6% and 22.4%, respectively, which indicates that the proposed method has higher measurement accuracy. The standard deviations are reduced by 17.0% and 21.7%, respectively, which indicates that the proposed method has better stability. In summary, this method is helpful for early diagnosis and monitoring of vascular diseases, such as atherosclerosis.

Fiber optical sensor effectiveness in the human body / 中国组织工程研究

BACKGROUND:In recent years, monitoring the pressure in the human body, especial y esophageal variceal pressure, becomes a hot spot. A lot of progress has been achieved regarding fiber optical sensors for measurement of the pressure in the human body. OBJECTIVE:To briefly review the fiber optical sensor applications in the human body. METHODS:A computer-based online retrieval was performed to search papers in CNKI periodical ful-text database and PubMed database (from January 1983 to March 2013) using the key words of“fiber optical sensor, pressure, measurement”in Chinese and English, respectively. After excluding objective-independent and repetitive papers, 40 papers were included for further analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Compared with traditional sensors, fiber optical sensors, which have advantages in high sensitivity, large dynamic range, fast response, tolerance to electronic interference, explosion proofing, fireproofing and corrosion protection, have been used to measure esophageal variceal pressure, intracranial pressure, pharyngeal pressure, pediatric airway pressure, cardiovascular&blood pressure, intervertebral disc pressure, intrauterin pressure in childbirth, pressure in the colon, plantar pressure and shear force as wel as other pressures in the human body. Fiber optical sensors have been used more widely in pressure monitoring. With the development of production technology and device performance, fiber optical sensors wil further promote the rapid development of medical science in the near future.

A new computerized endoscopic balloon manometry to detect esophageal variceal pressure: experimental validation and clinical feasibility / 中华消化内镜杂志

Objective To evaluate the clinical reliability and feasibility of computerized endoscopic balloon manometry in vitro and in vivo, in measurement of pressure of esophageal varices. Methods Computerized endoscopic balloon manometry was used to measure the pressure of variceal model with different diameter (3 mm, 6 mm and 8 mm) and intraluminal pressures (ranging from 8 to 36 mm Hg), and the findings were compared with actual pressures. The technique was also applied in 23 patients with liver cirrhosis and esophageal varices, and its correlation with hepatic venous pressure gradient and other factors related with varices bleeding. Results The study in vitro showed that the measured intraluminal pressure was correlated significantly with the actual value ( r ≥ 0. 993, P ＜ 0. 001 ) without obvious measurement bias(95% CI = -0.13 cm H2O to 0. 33 cm H2O). The measurement in 23 patients were success with little variation coefficient (r≥0. 998) between repeated procedures. Regression analysis showed a good correlation between variceal pressure and hepatic venous pressure gradient (r=0. 858, P ＜ 0. 001 ). A higher variceal pressure was strongly associated with presence of previous bleeding episodes, vascular diameter and presence of red color signs, but did not correlate with the parameter of Child-Pugh classification ( t = 0. 31, P =0. 76). Conclusion Computerized endoscopic balloon manometry is reliable and feasible to examine esophageal variceal pressure, and is very likely to be a valuable clinical index for variceal bleeding.

A study of manometry of esophageal varices based on computer vision / 生物医学工程学杂志

Non-invasive manometry of esophageal varices is a cynosure of researchers. This paper develops a method based on computer vision. Experiments results reveal that correct pressure value can be got quickly.