Microcalcification detection in full-field digital mammograms: A fully automated computer-aided system.

BACKGROUND: Microcalcification clusters in mammograms can be considered as early signs of breast cancer. However, their detection is a very challenging task because of different factors: large variety of breast composition, highly textured breast anatomy, impalpable size of microcalcifications in some cases, as well as inherent low contrast of mammograms. Thus, the need to support the clinicians' work with an automatic tool. METHODS: In this work a three-phases approach for clustered microcalcification detection is presented. Specifically, it is made up of a pre-processing step, aimed at highlighting potentially interesting breast structures, followed by a single microcalcification detection step, based on Hough transform, that is able to grasp the innate characteristic shape of the structures of interest. Finally, a cluster identification step to group microcalcifications is carried out by means of a clustering algorithm able to codify expert domain rules. RESULTS: The detection performance of the proposed method has been evaluated on 364 mammograms of 182 patients obtaining a true positive ratio of 91.78% with 2.87 false positives per image. CONCLUSIONS: Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method is able to detect microcalcification clusters in digital mammograms showing performance comparable to different methodologies exploited in the state-of-art approaches, with the advantage that it does not require any training phase and a large set of data. The performance of the proposed approach remains high even for more difficult clinical cases of mammograms of young women having high-density breast tissue thus resulting in a reduced contrast between microcalcifications and surrounding dense tissues.

A Gradient-Based Approach for Breast DCE-MRI Analysis.

Breast cancer is the main cause of female malignancy worldwide. Effective early detection by imaging studies remains critical to decrease mortality rates, particularly in women at high risk for developing breast cancer. Breast Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a common diagnostic tool in the management of breast diseases, especially for high-risk women. However, during this examination, both normal and abnormal breast tissues enhance after contrast material administration. Specifically, the normal breast tissue enhancement is known as background parenchymal enhancement: it may represent breast activity and depends on several factors, varying in degree and distribution in different patients as well as in the same patient over time. While a light degree of normal breast tissue enhancement generally causes no interpretative difficulties, a higher degree may cause difficulty to detect and classify breast lesions at Magnetic Resonance Imaging even for experienced radiologists. In this work, we intend to investigate the exploitation of some statistical measurements to automatically characterize the enhancement trend of the whole breast area in both normal and abnormal tissues independently from the presence of a background parenchymal enhancement thus to provide a diagnostic support tool for radiologists in the MRI analysis.

Major phenolic and volatile compounds and their influence on sensorial aspects in stem-contact fermentation winemaking of Primitivo red wines.

In red winemaking de-stemming is crucial since the stems contain polymeric phenolic compounds responsible for the astringency of wine. Wine such as Primitivo has low phenolic constituents and tannins and stems affect aroma, taste body and olfactory characteristics. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of presence of stems during fermentation on polyphenolic, volatile compounds and sensory characteristics of wine. Primitivo grapes vinified in presence of different percentage of stems: 100 % de-stemmed (D100), 75 % de-stemmed (D75) and 50 % de-stemmed (D50). Results confirmed that the wines vinified in presence of stems were higher in tannins, flavans, to vanillin and proanthocyanidins, colour intensity with lower anthocyanins. The presence of stems during fermentation conferred more structure and flavour to wines. They facilitated must aeration thus promoting synthesis of higher alcohols and ethyl esters by yeast. In particular, a higher content of hexan-1-ol, hex-3-en-1-ol and 2-phenyl ethanol in D50 and D75 gave the wines that suggest green grass, herb and floral. Wine from D75 seemed to be better than D50 in terms of volatile compounds as well as fruity, floral and balsamic components preserved, without any unpleasant taste of long chain fatty acids found in D50.

In vitro requirement for periostin in B lymphopoiesis.

B lymphopoiesis arrests in rabbits by 4 months of age. To identify molecules that contribute to this arrest, cDNA-representational difference analysis on BM stromal cells from young and adult rabbits showed that expression of Postn that encodes for the extracellular matrix protein periostin dramatically reduced with age. Postn-small interfering RNA OP9 cells lost their capacity to support B-cell development from rabbit or murine BM cells, and reexpression of periostin restored this potential, indicating an in vitro requirement for periostin in B lymphopoiesis. In our system, we determined that periostin deficiency leads to increased cell death and decreased proliferation of B-lineage progenitors. Further, RGD peptide inhibition of periostin/α(v)ß(3) interaction resulted in a marked decrease in B lymphopoiesis in vitro. Microarray analysis of the Postn-small interfering RNA OP9 cells showed decreased expression of key B-lymphopoietic factors, including IL-7 and CXCL12. In vivo, unidentified molecule(s) probably compensate periostin loss because Postn(-/-) mice had normal numbers of B-cell progenitors in BM. We conclude that the decline in periostin expression in adult rabbit BM does not solely explain the arrest of B lymphopoiesis. However, the interaction of periostin with α(v)ß(3) on lymphoid progenitors probably provides both proliferative and survival signals for cells in the B-cell development pathway.

A novel functional rabbit IL-7 isoform.

IL-7 is required for B cell development in mouse and is a key regulator of T cell development and peripheral T cell homeostasis in mouse and human. Recently, we found that IL-7 is expressed in rabbit bone marrow and in vitro, is required for differentiation of lymphoid progenitors to B and T lineage cells. Herein, we report the identification of a novel rabbit IL-7 isoform, IL-7II. Recombinant IL-7II (rIL-7II) binds lymphocytes via the IL-7R and induces phosphorylation of STAT5. Further, rIL-7II supports proliferation and differentiation of BM progenitor cells into B and T lineage cells. IL7-II is generated by alternative splicing, with an 11 amino acid insertion encoded by a separate exon, exon 2b. Exon 2b is conserved in other lagomorphs, in Perissodactyla, Artiodactyla, and Carnivora, but is absent in mouse and human.

Production of lysozyme-enriched biomass from cheese industry by-products.

Cheese whey and cottage cheese whey are by-products of the milk and cheese industry, resulting from the production of cheese and cottage cheese (ricotta) from milk. They are still rich in organic substances and cannot be discarded into the environment without proper treatment. Whey and cottage cheese whey were used as culture media for some strains of the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis, transformed with the human lysozyme gene. It was found that the yeast strains grew well in both media and produced a considerable amount of recombinant protein. Production kinetics showed that the human lysozyme was produced in a greater amount within 36 h of fermentation (125 micrograms ml-1 vs 25 micrograms ml-1 in the control) than in the synthetic commercial media used for strain preparation and characterization. The recombinant protein produced was actually shown to be the human lysozyme, using renaturing SDS-PAGE and Western blot techniques. While producing recombinant protein, the Kluyveromyces strain cleared the cottage cheese whey of most organic substances and produced a considerable amount (almost 3%) of lysozyme-enriched useful biomass.