Comparisons of dose distributions between IMPT and VMAT for pancreatic cancer / 中华放射医学与防护杂志

Objective:To compare dose distributions of hypofractionated radiotherapy for pancreatic cancer between IMPT and VMAT.Methods:Ten pancreatic cancer cases were included in this retrospective study. Photon (Edge) and proton (Proteus?PLUS) plans were designed by Eclipse and RayStation TPS, respectively. All plans were transferred to MIM system for extraction of parameters, which included Dmin, Dmean and Dmax of PTV, conformity index (CI), new conformity index (nCI), homogeneity index (HI), gradient index (GI), coverage, Dmax and dose-volume of the organs at risk (OARs). Results:There was no significant difference in CI between the two groups. The higher PTV Dmin, Dmean, Dmax, D98%, D2%, HI, coverage and the better GI, D2 cmwere found in VMAT ( t/ Z=-4.63-5.32, P<0.05). The lower 10%_PD was found in IMPT ( t=-7.47, P<0.05). Regarding the OARs, Dmax of the intestine, stomach, and duodenum and Dmean of the left kidney were similar between two groups without significant difference ( P>0.05). The D5 cm 3 of the intestine, D10 cm 3 of the stomach, D5 cm 3 and D10 cm 3 of the duodenum, D2/3 of the left kidney, Dmean and D2/3 of the right kidney were lower in IMPT than those in VMAT ( t/ Z=-8.12--2.60, P<0.05). However, the Dmax and D0.35 cm 3 of the spinal cord were higher in IMPT than those in VMAT ( t=7.30, 6.77, P<0.05). Conclusions:Both of hypofractionated radiotherapy plans of pancreatic cancer designed by VMAT and IMPT could meet clinical needs. No significant difference was found in Dmax of the adjacent gastrointestinal tracts between the two groups. While IMPT had the advantage over VMAT in the case of lower dose-volumes of the gastrointestinal tracts. Nevertheless, less protections of the OARs in front of the tumor volume could be provided by IMPT compared with VMAT.

Artificial intelligence based Chinese clinical trials eligibility criteria classification / 生物医学工程学杂志

Subject recruitment is a key component that affects the progress and results of clinical trials, and generally conducted with eligibility criteria (includes inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria). The semantic category analysis of eligibility criteria can help optimizing clinical trials design and building automated patient recruitment system. This study explored the automatic semantic categories classification of Chinese eligibility criteria based on artificial intelligence by academic shared task. We totally collected 38 341 annotated eligibility criteria sentences and predefined 44 semantic categories. A total of 75 teams participated in competition, with 27 teams having submitted system outputs. Based on the results, we found out that most teams adopted mixed models. The mainstream resolution was applying pre-trained language models capable of providing rich semantic representation, which were combined with neural network models and used to fine-tune the models with reference to classifier tasks, and finally improved classification performance could be obtained by ensemble modeling. The best-performing system achieved a macro

Preoperative ultrasonography of thyroid cancers:is it overdiagnosis or underdiagnosis? / 中华超声影像学杂志

Objective To investigate the accuracy and missed diagnosis rate of preoperative ultrasound in the diagnosis of thyroid carcinoma . Methods With the method of natural language recognition ,816 solitary thyroid nodules which received thyroidectomy were enrolled for the analysis of preoperative ultrasound examination and post-operative pathology results . The accuracy and the rate of missed diagnosis of ultrasonography for the diagnosis of thyroid carcinoma and lymph node metastasis were evaluated with the pathological results as the gold standard . Results There were 783 ( 96 .0％ ) malignant thyroid tumors ,6 ( 0 .7％ ) follicular tumor with uncertain malignant potential ,and 27 ( 3 .3％ ) benign thyroid tumors . Ultrasonography yielded an accuracy of 96 .1％ in the differential diagnosis between benign and malignant thyroid nodules and an accuracy of 94 .5％ in the quantification of nodule numbers . 5 .5％ of solitary nodules reported by ultrasound were proved to be 2 or more malignant nodules after the surgery . Regarding the diagnosis of central lymph node ,the preoperative ultrasound yielded an accuracy of 73 .0％and a misdiagnosis rate of 38 .7％ . For the lateral neck lymph node ,the accuracy was 88 .3％ ,and the misdiagnosis rate was 3 .4％ . Conclusions Natural language recognition method can assist clinical research . Ultrasonography is valuable in the diagnosis of thyroid carcinomas and neck lymph nodes . However , ultrasonography has a certain rate of misdiagnosis for the quantification of nodule numbers ,and for the diagnosis of lymph nodes in central and lateral necks .

An examination of the OMIM database for associating mutation to a consensus reference sequence

Gene mutation (e.g. substitution, insertion and deletion) and related phenotype information are important biomedical knowledge. Many biomedical databases (e.g. OMIM) incorporate such data. However, few studies have examined the quality of this data. In the current study, we examined the quality of protein single-point mutations in the OMIM and identified whether the corresponding reference sequences align with the mutation positions. Our results show that close to 20% of mutation data cannot be mapped to a single reference sequence. The failed mappings are caused by position conflict, site shifting (peptide, N-terminal methionine) and other types of data error. We propose a preliminary model to resolve such inconsistency in the OMIM database.

Perspectives on the Separation of Dispensary for Outpatients from Hospital / 中国药房

OBJECTIVE:To discuss the impact of the separation of dispensary for outpatients from hospital on patients,hospital and its staff.METHODS:The impact of the separation of dispensary for outpatients from hospital were discussed from aspects of hospital reimbursement mechanism of medical funds,medicine flow links,function of pharmaceutical care,patient's rights on drug choice et al.RESULTS & CONCLUSIONS:In view of current unsound reimbursement mechanism,the high drug price was resulted from multiple medicine flow links and irrational pricing of drugs.Blindly separation of dispensary for outpatients from hospital would lead to supervision vacancy of dispensary for outpatients,loss of function of pharmaceutical care,furthermore,patients would not be benefited form the step,and unhealthy tendency(rebate)would be hard to wipe out,more importantly,it would affect the sustainable development of hospital.

Preparation of danshensu microcapsules by spray drying and study on its in vitro release behavior / 中草药

Objective To prepare sustained-release danshensu microcapsules by spray drying.Methods Encapsulation efficiency of different coating materials was compared.The spray process was optimized using a central composite design for two variables to obtain microcapsules with microcapsules yield.Furthermore, in vitro release of danshensu microcapsules was determined.Results PVA was chosen as coating material and the ratio of coating material to core material was 3:1.The inlet air temperature was 190℃,the feed flow rate was 36 r/min,encapsulation efficiency was 85.0%,and microcapsules yield was 56.1%.The particle size of more than 70%microcapsules was between 6—12?m.Conclusion The optimized conditions of spray drying are reasonable,danshensu microcapsules can be used as sustained-release preparation.