Objectives: Recently, there have been important advances in the clinical application of targeted hybrid near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent-radioactive tracers. ICG-99mTc-nanocolloid, for example, is already being used by some centres for sentinel lymph node biopsy in head and neck cancer. The radioactive component allows imaging at depths which would not be possible with NIR alone and, once exposed, the NIR fluorescence reporter can be imaged at very high resolution. Gamma detection is currently carried out with a separate hand-held gamma camera or with a non-imaging probe. Visualisation of NIR fluorescence during surgery requires a dedicated NIR camera, several of which are available commercially. We describe a novel hand-held hybrid NIR-gamma small field of view camera, capable of displaying co-aligned images from both modalities, which can be fused into one image or viewed separately. This study is a preliminary investigation of the performance of the fluorescence component of this camera, including phantom studies and first images from a preclinical pilot study. Methods: The hybrid camera consists of a 1500 µm thick thallium doped caesium iodide columnar (CsI:Tl) scintillator coupled to an electron multiplying charged coupled device (EMCCD). A 1.0mm diameter tungsten pinhole collimator gives a 40mm x 40mm nominal field of view for an 8mm x 8mm CCD detection area. A fluorescence camera was aligned to provide the same field of view as the gamma camera with an LED ring as the excitation source. The performance of the fluorescence imaging was quantified in this study for the fluorophores ICG and IRDye800CW (CW800) using a range of bespoke phantom experiments. In vivo images were also obtained from a preclinical study of a targeted hybrid tracer (cRGD-CW800-TCO + TCO-DOTA-111In) in mice with HT29 colorectal cancer xenografts. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The portable hybrid camera prototype has been shown to successfully image dual NIR-gamma tracers using both in vitro and in vivo experimental models. With further development, this camera could be used intraoperatively, offering the benefits of gamma imaging at depth in tissues and high resolution surface NIR fluorescence imaging in a single imaging system.
The Internet of Things (IoT) technology is every object around us and it is used to connect these objects to the Internet to verify Machine to Machine (M2M) communication. The smart house system is the most important application of IoT technology; it is increase the quality of life and decrease the efforts. There were many problems that faced the existing smart house networking systems, including the high cost of implementation and upgrading, high power consumption, and supported limited features. Therefore, this paper presents the design and implementation of smart house network system (SHNS) using Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms as network infrastructure with ZigBee technology as wireless communication. SHNS consists of two mai
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Objectives: The demand for orthodontic treatment is nowadays increasing significantly for aesthetic improvement and to correct various kinds of malocclusion, yet the prolonged treatment time remains the main obstacle. This review aimed to demonstrate various orthodontic techniques and highlight the evidence-based successful approaches used for acceleration of orthodontic tooth movement. Materials and Methods: Data and sources of information pertaining to accelerated orthodontic tooth movement premised on English-written articles were searched using electronic databases including Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed and MEDLINE. Results: This review demonstrated the availability of different surgical and non-surgical methods to enhance tooth movem
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Since the appearance of COVID-19 disease as an epidemic and pandemic disease, many studies are performed to uncover the genetic nature of the newly discovered coronavirus with unique clinical features. The last three human coronavirus outbreaks, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are caused by Beta-Coronaviruses. Horizontal genetic materials transfer was proven from one coronavirus to the other coronavirus of non-human origin like infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) of avian. Horizontal genetic materials transfer was also from non-corona viruses like astroviruses and equine rhinovirus (ERV-2) or from coronavirus-unrelated viruses, like influenza virus type C. However, SARS-CoV-2 is identical to SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. Interestingly, Wuhan ci
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The piled raft is a geotechnical composite construction consisting of three elements: piles, raft and soil.
In the design of piled rafts, the load shared between the piles and the raft, and the piles are used up to a
load level that can be of the same order of magnitude as the bearing capacity of a comparable single
pile or even greater. Therefore, the piled raft foundation allows reduction of settlements in a very
economic way as compared to traditional foundation concepts.
This paper presents experimental study to investigate the behavior of piled raft system in sandy
soil. A small scale “prototype” model was tested in a sand box with load applied to the system through
a compression machine. The settlement was
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Idioms are a very important part of the English language: you are told that if you want to go far (succeed) you should pull your socks up (make a serious effort to improve your behaviour, the quality of your work, etc.) and use your grey matter (brain).1 Learning and translating idioms have always been very difficult for foreign language learners. The present paper explores some of the reasons why English idiomatic expressions are difficult to learn and translate. It is not the aim of this paper to attempt a comprehensive survey of the vast amount of material that has appeared on idioms in Adams and Kuder (1984), Alexander (1984), Dixon (1983), Kirkpatrick (2001), Langlotz (2006), McCarthy and O'Dell (2002), and Wray (2002), among others
... Show MoreThe problem of frequency estimation of a single sinusoid observed in colored noise is addressed. Our estimator is based on the operation of the sinusoidal digital phase-locked loop (SDPLL) which carries the frequency information in its phase error after the noisy sinusoid has been acquired by the SDPLL. We show by computer simulations that this frequency estimator beats the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) on the frequency error variance for moderate and high SNRs when the colored noise has a general low-pass filtered (LPF) characteristic, thereby outperforming, in terms of frequency error variance, several existing techniques some of which are, in addition, computationally demanding. Moreover, the present approach generalizes on existing work tha
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Cosmetic products contain variable amounts of nutrients that support microbial growth. Most contaminants in cosmetic products include bacteria such as Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas, Klebsiella, Achromobacter and Alcaligenes. Contaminated water is a likely source of organisms found in cosmetic products. Products such as shampoo, hand and body lotion, facial cleanser, and liquid soaps were analyzed. In this study, out of 60 cosmetic products analyzed, 26.4% were found to be contaminated. Most of the contamination was from bacteria and no fungal contamination was detected. The highest level o
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With wireless sensor network (WSN) wide applications in popularity, securing its data becomes a requirement. This can be accomplished by encrypting sensor node data. In this paper a new an efficient symmetric cryptographic algorithm is presented. This algorithm is called wireless sensor network wavelet curve ciphering system (WSN-WCCS). The algorithm idea based on discrete wavelet transformation to generate keys for each node in WSN. It implements on hierarchical clustering WSN using LEACH protocol. Python programming language version 2.7 was used to create the simulator of WSN framework and implement a WSN-WCCS algorithm. The simulation result of the proposed WSN-WCCS with other symmetric algorithms has show
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