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.
Upper limb amputation is a condition that severely limits the amputee’s movement. Patients who have lost the use of one or more of their upper extremities have difficulty performing activities of daily living. To help improve the control of upper limb prosthesis with pattern recognition, non-invasive approaches (EEG and EMG signals) is proposed in this paper and are integrated with machine learning techniques to recognize the upper-limb motions of subjects. EMG and EEG signals are combined, and five features are utilized to classify seven hand movements such as (wrist flexion (WF), outward part of the wrist (WE), hand open (HO), hand close (HC), pronation (PRO), supination (SUP), and rest (RST)). Experiments demonstrate that usin
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Realistic implementation of nanofluids in subsurface projects including carbon geosequestration and enhanced oil recovery requires full understanding of nanoparticles (NPs) adsorption behaviour in the porous media. The physicochemical interactions between NPs and between the NP and the porous media grain surface control the adsorption behavior of NPs. This study investigates the reversible and irreversible adsorption of silica NPs onto oil-wet and water-wet carbonate surfaces at reservoir conditions. Each carbonate sample was treated with different concentrations of silica nanofluid to investigate NP adsorption in terms of nanoparticles initial size and hydrophobicity at different temperatures, and pressures. Aggregation behaviour and the
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It is well known that petroleum refineries are considered the largest generator of oily sludge which may cause serious threats to the environment if disposed of without treatment. Throughout the present research, it can be said that a hybrid process including ultrasonic treatment coupled with froth floatation has been shown as a green efficient treatment of oily sludge waste from the bottom of crude oil tanks in Al-Daura refinery and able to get high yield of base oil recovery which is 65% at the optimum operating conditions (treatment time = 30 min, ultrasonic wave amplitude = 60 micron, and (solvent: oily sludge) ratio = 4). Experimental results showed that 83% of the solvent used was recovered meanwhile the main water
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The - mixing ratios of -transitions from levels in populated in the reactions are calculated in present work using - ratio, constant statisticalTensor and least squares fitting methods The results obtained are in general, in good agreement or consistent, within the associated uncertainties, with these reported in Ref.[9],the discrepancies that occurs are due to inaccuracy existing in the experimental data The results obtained in the present work confirm the –method for mixed transitions better than that for pure transition because this method depends only on the experimental data where the second method depends on the pure or those considered to be pure -transitions, the same results occur in – method
Background: Rituximab is a chimeric IgG1 kappa immunoglobulin that has been genetically modified to incorporate human constant region sequences together with murine light- and heavy-chain variable region sequences. People use it to treat rheumatoid arthritis and certain malignancies. Objective: The study aimed to assess the potential association between the serum levels of Factor I, CD59, interleukins (IL)-6, and interferon-gamma (IFN)-γ and the response to Rituximab treatment in Iraqi rheumatoid arthritis patients. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the rheumatology center at Baghdad Teaching Hospital. Ninety adult patients who have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and are receiving Rituximab intravenous i
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This paper aims to propose a hybrid approach of two powerful methods, namely the differential transform and finite difference methods, to obtain the solution of the coupled Whitham-Broer-Kaup-Like equations which arises in shallow-water wave theory. The capability of the method to such problems is verified by taking different parameters and initial conditions. The numerical simulations are depicted in 2D and 3D graphs. It is shown that the used approach returns accurate solutions for this type of problems in comparison with the analytic ones.
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This paper presents a hybrid genetic algorithm (hGA) for optimizing the maximum likelihood function ln(L(phi(1),theta(1)))of the mixed model ARMA(1,1). The presented hybrid genetic algorithm (hGA) couples two processes: the canonical genetic algorithm (cGA) composed of three main steps: selection, local recombination and mutation, with the local search algorithm represent by steepest descent algorithm (sDA) which is defined by three basic parameters: frequency, probability, and number of local search iterations. The experimental design is based on simulating the cGA, hGA, and sDA algorithms with different values of model parameters, and sample size(n). The study contains comparison among these algorithms depending on MSE value. One can conc
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