Effect of acupuncture on tic disorder: a randomized controlled clinical trial based on energy metabolomics and infrared thermography.

BACKGROUND: Acupuncture is a method for treating tic disorder. However, there is a lack of sufficient clinical objective basis in regards of its treatment efficacy. Indeed, there are structural abnormalities present in energy metabolism and infrared thermography in children with tic disorder. Therefore, this study proposes a clinical trial scheme to explore the possible mechanism of acupuncture in treating tic disorder. METHODS: This randomized controlled trial will recruit a total of 90 children, in which they will be divided into non-intervention group and intervention group. The non-intervention group consists of 30 healthy children while the intervention group consists of 60 children with tic disorder. The intervention group will be randomly allocated into either the treatment group or the control group, with 30 children randomly assigned in each group. Children either received acupuncture treatment and behavioral therapy (treatment group) or sham acupuncture treatment and behavioral therapy (control group), 3 treatment sessions per week for a period of 12 weeks, with a total of 36 treatment sessions. Outcome measures include YGTSS, urinary and fecal metabolomics, infrared thermography of body surface including governor vessel. For the intervention group, these outcome measures will be collected at the baseline and 90th day prior to intervention. Whereas for the non-intervention group, outcome measures (excluding YGTSS) will be collected at the baseline. DISCUSSION: The main outcome will be to observe the changes of the severity of tic condition, the secondary outcome will be to observe the changes of structural characteristic of infrared thermography of body surface/acupoints along the governor vessel and to evaluate the changes of urinary and fecal metabolomics at the end of the treatment, so as to analyze the relationship between them and to provide further knowledge in understanding the possible mechanism of acupuncture in improving the clinical symptoms via regulating and restoring the body metabolomics network, which in future it can develop as a set of clinical guideline (diagnosis, treatment, assessment, prognosis) in treating tic disorder. ChiCTR2300075188(Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, http://www.chictr.org.cn , registered on 29 August 2023).

Coronary artery calcium scoring assessment in ultra-low-dose chest computed tomography.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the effect of non-electrocardiogram (ECG) -triggered ultra-low-dose CT (ULD-CT) with different reconstruction protocols on coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring assessment, compared with ECG-triggered CAC CT (CAC-CT). METHODS: This prospective study included 115 patients who underwent CAC-CT and ULD-CT scans under the same topogram images. CAC-CT adopted a prospective ECG-triggered sequential acquisition with a tube potential of 120 kV, and the reconstruction protocol was standard Qr36 + slice 3 mm (CACQr-3mm group). ULD-CT adopted a non-ECG-triggered high-pitch acquisition with a tube potential of Sn100 kV, and four groups of images (named ULDQr-3mm, ULDSa-3mm, ULDQr-1.5mm, and ULDSa-1.5mm) were reconstructed using different reconstruction algorithms (standard Qr36, kV-independent Sa36) and slice thicknesses (3 mm, 1.5 mm). The accuracy of CAC detection by ULD-CT was calculated. The agreement of the CAC score between ULD-CT and CAC-CT scans was assessed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and Bland-Altman plot, and the agreement of risk categorization was assessed using weighted kappa. RESULTS: The sensitivity and specificity of the ULDSa-1.5mm group for detecting positive CAC were 100% and 97.4%, respectively (k = 0.980). The CAC score for the ULDSa-3mm and ULDSa-1.5mm groups demonstrated excellent agreement with the CACQr-3mm group (ICC = 0.992, 0.990, respectively), with a mean difference of -12.3 and - 12.4. The agreement of risk categorization based on absolute and percentile CAC score between the ULDSa-1.5mm and CACQr-3mm groups was excellent (weighted k = 0.954, 0.983, respectively), and risk reclassification rates were low (3.5%, 2.8%, respectively). The effective dose was reduced by approximately 77.2% for the ULD-CT compared to the CAC-CT (0.18 mSv vs. 0.79 mSv, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Reconstruction with a 1.5-mm slice thickness and kV-independent iterative algorithmic protocol in ULD-CT yielded excellent agreement in CAC score quantification and risk categorization compared with ECG-triggered CAC-CT.

Optimization of uniformity in coronary artery enhancement using a bolus tracking technique with a dual region of interest in coronary computed tomographic angiography.

BACKGROUND: Consistent coronary artery enhancement is essential to achieve accurate and reproducible quantification of coronary plaque composition. PURPOSE: To optimize coronary artery uniformity of enhancement using a bolus tracking technique with a dual region of interest (ROI) in coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) on a 320-detector CT scanner. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This prospective study recruited 100 consecutive patients who underwent CCTA and were randomly divided into two groups, namely, a manual trigger group (n = 50), in which a manual fast start technique was used to start the diagnostic scan with the visual evaluation of attenuation in the left atrium and left ventricle, and an automatic trigger group (n = 50), in which a bolus tracking technique was used to automatically start the breath-holding command and diagnostic scan with two ROIs placed in the right and left ventricles. Coronary artery image quality was assessed using quantitative and qualitative scores. The enhancement uniformity was characterized by attenuation variability of the ascending aorta (AAO) and coronary arteries. RESULTS: No statistically significant differences in the image quality of the coronary arteries were observed between the two groups (all P > 0.05). The coefficients of variation (COVs) of arterial attenuation in the automatic trigger group were significantly smaller than in the manual trigger group (AAO: 9.89% vs. 17.93%; LMA: 10.35% vs. 18.98%; LAD proximal: 12.09% vs. 20.84%; LCX proximal: 11.85% vs. 20.95%; RCA proximal: 12.13% vs. 20.84%; all P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The automatic trigger technique accompanied with dual ROI provides consistent coronary artery enhancement and optimizes coronary artery enhancement uniformity in CCTA on a 320-detector CT scanner.

Aging of Chinese bony orbit: automatic calculation based on UNet++ and connected component analysis.

PURPOSE: Current research on the aging of bony orbit is usually done manually, which is inefficient and has a large error. In this paper, automatic segmentation of bony orbit based on deep learning and automatic calculation of the parameters of the segmented orbital contour (area and height of bony orbit) are presented. METHODS: The craniofacial CT scanning data of 595 Chinese were used to carry out three-dimensional reconstruction and output the craniofacial images. The orbital contour images are obtained automatically by UNet++ segmentation network, and then the bony orbital area and height were calculated automatically by connected component analysis. RESULTS: The automatic segmentation method has an Intersection of Union of 95.41% in craniofacial CT images. During the aging, the bony orbital area of males increased with age, while that of females decreased, and the area in male was larger than that in female (P < 0.05). The distance from equal points 10 and 40-90 to the supraorbital rim was significantly larger (P < 0.05). Except for the equal point 90, the distance from equal points to the inferior orbital rim was obviously larger (P < 0.05). In the females, the distance from equal points 50-70 to inferior orbital rim was significantly lower (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The method proposed here can automatically and accurately study image dataset of large-scale bony orbital CT imaging. UNet++ can achieve high-precision segmentation of bony orbital contours. The bony orbital area of Chinese changes with aging, and the bony orbital height changes different between males and females, which may be caused by the different position and degree of orbital bone resorption of males and females in the process of aging.

Deep Learning-Based CT Radiomics for Feature Representation and Analysis of Aging Characteristics of Asian Bony Orbit.

OBJECTIVE: This paper puts forward a new method for automatic segmentation of bony orbit as well as automatic extraction and classification of aging features of segmented orbit contour based on depth learning, with which the aging mode of bony orbit contour is preliminarily validated. METHOD: Three-dimensional reconstruction was carried out by using the craniofacial Computed Tomography scanning data of 595 adult Mongolians at different ages (119 young males, 78 young females, 109 middle-aged males, 89 middle-aged females, 95 elderly males, and 105 elderly females), the craniofacial images were exported, orbit contour images were obtained with U-Net segmentation network, and then the orbit contour features of young group, the middle-aged group and the elderly group were classified with the classification network. Next, contour area, height, and other features put forward in existing research were automatically calculated by using the connected component shape description method; and it was validated whether the aging features of the bony orbit only occur to partial or the whole orbit. RESULTS: With the method put forward in this paper, high-precision identification (97.94% and 99.18%) of 3 categories in the male and female group experiments. In the meanwhile, it was found in the comparison experiment with other features that bony orbit contour definitely has features relating to aging, but these features only occur to partial areas of the orbit, which enables the convolutional neural network to achieve good identification effects. And, bone resorption of the superior orbital rim of males is more obvious than that of the inferior orbital rim, but the overall shape features like the bony orbit area and height do not change significantly along with the increase of the age. CONCLUSIONS: U-Net can realize high-precision segmentation of the orbit contour, and with the Convolutional Neural Network-based orbit contour sorting algorithm, the aging degree of the bony orbit can be identified precisely. It is preliminarily validated that the aging mode of Mongolian bony orbit contour is that the bone resorption of the superior orbital rim is more obvious than that of the inferior orbital rim, and the change of the orbit area, perimeter, height and circularity is not obvious in the aging process.

Size-Specific Dose Estimates of Radiation Based on Body Weight and Body Mass Index for Chest and Abdomen-Pelvic CTs.

BACKGROUND: To correlate body weight, body mass index (BMI), and water-equivalent diameter (d w) and to assess size-specific dose estimates (SSDEs) based on body weight and BMI for chest and abdomen-pelvic CT examinations. METHODS: An in-house program was used to calculate d w, size-dependent conversion factor (f), and SSDE for 1178 consecutive patients undergoing chest and abdomen-pelvic CT examinations. Associations among body weight, BMI, and d w were determined, and linear equations were generated using linear regression analysis of the first 50% of the patient population. SSDEs (SSDEweight and SSDEBMI) were calculated based on body weight and BMI as d w surrogates on the second 50% of the patient population. Mean root-mean-square errors of SSDEweight and SSDEBMI were computed with SSDE from the axial images as reference values. RESULTS: Both body weight and BMI correlated strongly with d w for the chest (r = 0.85, 0.87, all p < 0.001) and abdomen-pelvis (r = 0.85, 0.86, all p < 0.001). Mean values of SSDEweight and SSDEBMI based on the linear equations for body weight, BMI, and d w were in close agreement with SSDE from the axial images, with overall mean root-mean-square errors of 0.62 mGy (6.10%) and 0.57 mGy (5.65%), for chest, and 0.76 mGy (5.61%) and 0.71 mGy (5.22%), for abdomen-pelvis, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Both body weight and BMI, serving as d w surrogates, can be used to calculate SSDEs in the chest and abdomen-pelvis CT examinations, providing values comparable to SSDEs from the axial images, with an overall mean root-mean-square error of less than 0.76 mGy or 6.10%.

Tensile mechanical performance of Ni-Co alloy nanowires by molecular dynamics simulation.

In this present contribution, tensile mechanical properties of Ni-Co alloy nanowires with Co content from 0 to 20% were studied by molecular dynamics. The simulation results show the alloy nanowire with the Co content of 5% has the highest yield value of 9.72 GPa. In addition, more Frank dislocations were generated during the loading process to improve the performance of the alloy nanowire. The Young's modulus increases little by little from 105.68 to 179.78 GPa with the increase of Co content. Secondly, with the increase of temperature, the yield strength gradually decreases to 2.13 GPa. Young's modulus tends to decrease linearly from 170.7 GPa to 48.21 GPa. At the temperatures of 500 K and 700 K, it is easier to form Frank dislocation and Hirth dislocation, respectively, in the loading process. The peak value of the radial distribution function decreases and the number of peaks decreases, indicating the disappearance of the ordered structure. Finally, after the introduction of the surface and inner void, the yield strength of the nanowire drops about to 8.97 and 6.6 GPa, respectively, and the yield strains drop to 0.056 and 0.043. In the case of the existence of internal void, perfect dislocation and Hirth dislocation can be observed in the structure.