Introduction The Hybrid Gamma Camera (HGC) is being developed to enhance the localisation of radiopharmaceutical uptake in targeted tissues during surgical procedures such as sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy. Purpose To assess the capability of the HGC, a lymph-node-contrast (LNC) phantom was constructed for an evaluative study simulating medical scenarios of varying radioactivity concentration and SLN size. Materials and methods The phantom was constructed using two methyl methacrylate PMMA plates (8 mm thick). The SLNs were simulated by drilling circular wells of diameters ranging between 10 mm and 2.5 mm (16 wells in total) in one plate. These simulated SLNs were placed underneath scattering material with thicknesses ranging between 5 mm and 40 mm. The second plate contains four rectangular wells to simulate background activity uptake surrounding the SLNs. The activity used ranged between 4 MBq and 0.025 MBq for the SLNs. The background activity was 1/10 of the SLNs activity. The collimator to source distance was 120 mm. Results Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) analysis and spatial resolution measurements of the simulated SLN were used to compare the imaging sets over acquisition times ranging between 60s and 240s. The HGC successfully detected 87.5% to 100% of the SLNs through 20mm of scattering material, and it could detect 75% to 93.75% of the SLNs through 40mm of scattering material. Measurement of Full-Width-at-Half-Maximum (FWHM) for the detected SLNs ranged between 9.5 mm and 12 mm. Conclusion The HGC is capable of detecting low activity uptake in small SLNs indicating its usefulness as an intraoperative imaging system during surgical SLN procedures.
Plumbago (Plumbaginaceae) is a genus of 10-20 species of flowering plants used in traditional Indian medicine, native to warm temperature to tropical regions of the world. The roots of Plumbago europaea, the Iraqi species of Plumbago, have been used for the treatment of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and dysmenorrhea. The main active constituents from dried powdered leaves and roots of Plumbago europaea were extracted by Soxhlet apparatus using ethyl acetate, the main active constituent was characterized by spectroscopic analysis (IR, 1H NMR, and 13C NMR) as plumbagin. Quantitative and qualitative study of plumbagin in the roots and leaves extracts was carried out by HP
... Show MoreDistributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on Web-based services have grown in both number and sophistication with the rise of advanced wireless technology and modern computing paradigms. Detecting these attacks in the sea of communication packets is very important. There were a lot of DDoS attacks that were directed at the network and transport layers at first. During the past few years, attackers have changed their strategies to try to get into the application layer. The application layer attacks could be more harmful and stealthier because the attack traffic and the normal traffic flows cannot be told apart. Distributed attacks are hard to fight because they can affect real computing resources as well as network bandwidth. DDoS attacks
... Show MoreThis study aims to determine the prevalence of Entamoeba histolytica, Entamoeba dispar and
Entamoeba moshkovskii by three methods of diagnosis (microscopic examination, cultivation and PCR) that
were compared to obtain an accurate diagnosis of Entamoeba spp. during amoebiasis. Total (n=150) stool
samples related to patients were (n = 100) and healthy controls (n= 50). Clinically diagnosed stool samples
(n=100) were collected from patients attending the consultant clinics of different hospitals in Basrah during
the period from January 2018 to January 2019. The results showed that 60% of collected samples were
positive in a direct microscopic examination. All samples were cultivated on different media; the Bra
Background: Dysfunction of sinoatrial node is a set of abnormal rhythms which are resulted from the sinoatrial node malfunction of the sinus node, the chief natural cardiac pacemaker. The common, and occasionally, the single method for treatment of heart arrhythmias was implantation of pacemaker, which reduce symptoms exactly occurs after implantation. Aim: To detect the role of smoking on cardiac electrophysiology parameters in sinus node dysfunction in Iraqi patients such as SNRT and AH. Methods: A cross sectional study, was conducted on 59 patient ranging between 20-50 years old and involving 35 female and 24 male patients, suffering from an unexplained symptoms of sinoatrial node dysfunction (SND). The enrolled participants were gathere
... Show MoreA mathematical model has been formulated to predict the influence of high outdoor air temperature on the performance of small scale air - conditioning system using R22 and alternative refrigerants R290, R407C, R410A. All refrigerants were investigated in the cooling mode operation. The mathematical model results have been validated with experimental data extracted from split type air conditioner of 2 TR capacity. This entailed the construction of an experimental test rig which consists of four main parts. They are, the refrigeration system, psychrometric test facility, measuring instrumentation, and auxiliary systems. The conditioned air was maintained at 25 0C dry bulb and 19 0C wet bulb for all tests. The outdoor ambient air temperatur
... Show MoreA review of the literature on intellectual capital development was conducted using systemic criteria for the inclusion of relevant studies. The concepts behind the ideas explored in the present study were discussed in respect to the subject matter. Examining the past state of the art in the intellectual capital sector for achieving high levels of innovation performance provided a multidimensional picture of intellectual capital, innovation performance, and dynamic capabilities. The present review was designed to illustrate the correlation between intellectual capital and innovation performance, as well as the role of dynamic capabilities in moderating the relationship between these constructs. Accordingly, we presented an extensive
... Show MoreCryptography algorithms play a critical role in information technology against various attacks witnessed in the digital era. Many studies and algorithms are done to achieve security issues for information systems. The high complexity of computational operations characterizes the traditional cryptography algorithms. On the other hand, lightweight algorithms are the way to solve most of the security issues that encounter applying traditional cryptography in constrained devices. However, a symmetric cipher is widely applied for ensuring the security of data communication in constraint devices. In this study, we proposed a hybrid algorithm based on two cryptography algorithms PRESENT and Salsa20. Also, a 2D logistic map of a chaotic system is a
... Show More