A Highly Robust Medical Image Watermarking Method for Medical Real-time Applications.

Background: Watermarking such as other security concepts is an ongoing challenging research issue, especially for medical images, to protect patient privacy. Medical images need to be shared and transferred between hospitals and specialists as quickly as possible for better diagnosis. Fast and simple watermarking is needed as well as the robust transferring of channel noise, such as salt and pepper noise and robust cropping that may occur from specialists and signature encryption for patient privacy. Methods: In this article, a highly robust and simple watermarking method is introduced. The proposed method has very low computational complexity and at the same time, it is very robust to interference and uses simple computations such as (XORs) Exclusive ORs and rotations that can be done in real-time. The proposed method uses a combination of hidden neighboring signature information, Sudoku permutation, and noise pre-processing to achieve high robustness against salt and pepper noise and cropping. Simple signature encryption is also used. Results: The proposed method is examined in different medical image datasets. The experimental results indicate the proposed watermarking system is robust to salt and pepper noise density of up to 90% and about 70% cropping. The number of computations including encryption is five XOR per pixel and a rotation per block of signature size. Conclusion: A novel method for medical image watermarking is presented. The proposed method is in the spatial domain, has encryption, and uses only XOR computation. The proposed method is highly robust to noise and cropping which is necessary for medical uses. The proposed method can be used efficiently for real-time watermarking for medical and nonmedical image datasets.

Evaluation of plasma circ_0006282 as a novel diagnostic biomarker in colorectal cancer.

BACKGROUND: Nowadays, non-invasive and rapid detection of cancers through molecular biomarkers has received much attention. Therefore, this study investigated the non-invasive and rapid diagnosis of colorectal cancer through one of the newest biomarkers (circular RNA). METHODS: For this purpose, we collected tumoral, adjacent normal tissue, and plasma samples from 100 colorectal cancer (CRC) patients, 25 postoperative CRC patients, 28 colitis patients, and 108 healthy donors. First Illumina high-throughput (Hi Seq 2000) sequencing was performed to identify known and novel differentially expressed circRNAs in the cancerous and adjacent normal tissues (n = 3). We used quantitative real-time fluorescent polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) to detect the expression level of hsa_circ_0006282 among the different samples. Moreover, inter- and intra-assays were performed to evaluate the potential of hsa_circ_0006282 as being a biomarker. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was drawn to appraise its diagnostic efficacy, and the sensitivity of this circ RNA was evaluated. RESULTS: Based on RNA-sequencing results circ_0006282, cirs7, circ-0001313, circ_0055625, circ_000984, circ_0055625, circ_0001178, circ_0071589, circ-001569 were upregulated, and circ-ITGA7, circ-CDYL, circITCH, circ_0026344, circ_0000038, circ_0002220, circ_0067480, circIGHV3-20-1, circ_104916, circ_0009361 were downregulated circRNA. The hsa_circ_0006282 was the highest upregulated differentially expressed circRNA. Expression evaluation of this circRNA on different samples showed upregulation in CRC tissues (p < 0.0001) and plasma samples of CRC patients in comparison to healthy controls (p < 0.0001), while the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.831 (95% CI: 0.779-0.883). Expression of hsa_circ_0006282 in CRC patients decreased to normal after surgery (p < 0.0001). Our results showed high specificity and sensitivity of CRC detection when hsa_circ_0006282, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), and carbohydrate antigen199 (CA199) are combined. CONCLUSION: Plasma hsa_circ_0006282 can be used as a novel diagnostic and dynamic monitoring biomarker in CRC patients.

Virtual Reality Therapy for Social Phobia: A Scoping Review.

Virtual reality (VR) has become an interesting alternative for the treatment of social phobia. This scoping review explored the impact of VR technologies in the treatment of social phobia (25 papers were included). Treatment approaches to social phobia included virtual reality exposure therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, exposure group therapy, in vivo exposure therapy, and waiting list. VR was identified as the most successful approach, not only in improving social phobia, but also resulting in real life changes such as improvement in occupational success. VR Head Mounted Displays were used in most of studies (76%), followed by VR-based Specific Systems (24%). Although VR techniques indicated positive impact on patients to reduce their anxiety, it is paramount to consider variables such as the way therapists control the environment as well as individuals' characteristics for achieving the best outcome.