Neuroimage-Based Consciousness Evaluation of Patients with Secondary Doubtful Hydrocephalus Before and After Lumbar Drainage / 神经科学通报·英文版

Hydrocephalus is often treated with a cerebrospinal fluid shunt (CFS) for excessive amounts of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. However, it is very difficult to distinguish whether the ventricular enlargement is due to hydrocephalus or other causes, such as brain atrophy after brain damage and surgery. The non-trivial evaluation of the consciousness level, along with a continuous drainage test of the lumbar cistern is thus clinically important before the decision for CFS is made. We studied 32 secondary mild hydrocephalus patients with different consciousness levels, who received T1 and diffusion tensor imaging magnetic resonance scans before and after lumbar cerebrospinal fluid drainage. We applied a novel machine-learning method to find the most discriminative features from the multi-modal neuroimages. Then, we built a regression model to regress the JFK Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) scores to quantify the level of consciousness. The experimental results showed that our method not only approximated the CRS-R scores but also tracked the temporal changes in individual patients. The regression model has high potential for the evaluation of consciousness in clinical practice.

Neuroimage-Based Consciousness Evaluation of Patients with Secondary Doubtful Hydrocephalus Before and After Lumbar Drainage / 神经科学通报·英文版

Hydrocephalus is often treated with a cerebrospinal fluid shunt (CFS) for excessive amounts of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. However, it is very difficult to distinguish whether the ventricular enlargement is due to hydrocephalus or other causes, such as brain atrophy after brain damage and surgery. The non-trivial evaluation of the consciousness level, along with a continuous drainage test of the lumbar cistern is thus clinically important before the decision for CFS is made. We studied 32 secondary mild hydrocephalus patients with different consciousness levels, who received T1 and diffusion tensor imaging magnetic resonance scans before and after lumbar cerebrospinal fluid drainage. We applied a novel machine-learning method to find the most discriminative features from the multi-modal neuroimages. Then, we built a regression model to regress the JFK Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) scores to quantify the level of consciousness. The experimental results showed that our method not only approximated the CRS-R scores but also tracked the temporal changes in individual patients. The regression model has high potential for the evaluation of consciousness in clinical practice.

In vitro evaluation of mucoadhesion and permeation enhancement of polymeric amphiphilic nanoparticles.

Oleoyl-carboxymethy-chitosan (OCMCS) nanoparticles based on chitosan with various molecular weights were prepared using coacervation process, which demonstrated particle size of 150-350 nm, zeta potential of 10-20 mV, and high encapsulation efficiency of fluorescein isothiocyanate dextran (FD4). OCMCS nanoparticles were found to be adsorbed onto the excised carp intestinal mucosa, the extent of adsorption increased with increasing chitosan molecular weight. In comparison to FD4 solution, OCMCS nanoparticles promoted FD4 transport through excised carp intestinal mucosa by 3.26-6.52 folds, which were observed via fluorescence microscope. The OCMCS nanoparticulate systems that interacted with the Caco-2 cells decreased the transepithelial electric resistance (TEER) and induced increasing the apparent permeability coefficient (Papp) of FD4 by 3.61-6.32 folds. Cytotoxicity studies in Caco-2 monolayers verified the safety of the delivery system. The improvement of mucoadhesive ability and permeability enable the OCMCS nanosystems suitable carriers for the intestinal absorption of protein drugs.