Objectives: Small field of view gamma detection and imaging technologies for monitoring in vivo tracer uptake are rapidly expanding and being introduced for bed-side imaging and image guided surgical procedures. The Hybrid Gamma Camera (HGC) has been developed to enhance the localization of targeted radiopharmaceuticals during surgical procedures; for example in sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsies and for bed-side imaging in procedures such as lacrimal drainage imaging and thyroid scanning. In this study, a prototype anthropomorphic head and neck phantom has been designed, constructed, and evaluated using representative modelled medical scenarios to study the capability of the HGC to detect SLNs and image small organs. Methods: An anthropomorphic head and neck phantom has been designed to mimic the adult head and neck including some internal organs and tissues of interest, such as the thyroid gland and sentinel lymph nodes. The design of the head and neck phantom included an adjustable inner jig holding the simulated SLNs and thyroid gland. The simulated thyroid gland was designed and 3D printed taking into consideration the size and the shape of a healthy adult thyroid gland. The inner sealed space of the thyroid was filled with 15MBq of 99mTc through two upper filling valves. Sealed micro-tubes (0.2ml) have been employed to simulate SLNs containing various 99mTc activity concentrations ranging between 0.1MBq and 1MBq, and can be positioned at any desired place in the head and neck region. An active background was simulated through mixing 10MBq of 99mTc solution with the water used to fill the outer shell of the head and neck phantom. Results: The head and neck phantom was employed to simulate a situation where there are four SLNs distributed at two different vertical levels and at two depths within the neck. Contrast to noise ratio (CNR) calculations were performed for the detected SLNs at an 80mm distance between both pinhole collimators (i.e. 0.5mm and 1.0mm diameters) and the surface of the head and neck phantom with a 100s acquisition time. The recorded CNR values for the simulated SLNs are higher when the HGC was fitted with the 1.0mm diameter pinhole collimator. For instance, the recorded CNR values for the superficially simulated SLN containing 0.1MBq of 99mTc using 0.5mm and 1.0mm diameter pinhole collimators are 6.48 and 16.42, respectively (~87% difference). The anatomical context provided by the hybrid imaging aided the localization process of radioactivity accumulation in simulated SLNs. Gamma and hybrid optical images were acquired using the HGC with both available pinhole collimators for the simulated thyroid gland. The thyroid images produced varied in terms of spatial resolution and detectability. The count profiles through the middle of the simulated thyroid gland images provided by both pinhole collimators were obtained. The HGC could clearly differentiate the individual peaks of both thyroid lobes in the gamma image produced by the 0.5mm pinhole collimator. In contrast, the recorded count profile for the acquired image using the 1.0mm diameter pinhole collimator showed broader peaks for both lobes, reflecting the degradation of the spatial resolution with increasing the diameter of the pinhole collimator. Conclusion: The capability of the HGC has been evaluated utilizing a prototype anthropomorphic head and neck phantom, and the gamma and hybrid images obtained demonstrate that it is ideally suited for intraoperative SLNs detection and small organ imaging. The standardization of test phantoms and protocols for SFOV portable gamma systems will provide an opportunity to collect data across various medical centers and research groups. Moreover, it will provide a technical baseline for researchers and clinical practitioners to consider when assessing their SFOV gamma imaging systems. The anthropomorphic head and neck phantom described is cost effective, reproducible, flexible and anatomically representative.
Background. The motor response is a fundamental ability that is evident during any physical or motor activity. However, the need for this ability varies from one sport to another and depends on the specific skills required in each sport. Objectives. This study aims to compare the average motor reaction times of the arm and leg among handball, basketball, and volleyball players aged 14 to 16 years. Methods. The sample included 30 players aged 14-16 years from the sports talent care center, evenly distributed on handball, basketball, and volleyball. Standardized tests were used to measure the speed of motor response, including the Batak Micro test for hands, which records the number of responses to light stimuli in 30 seconds, and the Saqer t
... Show MoreThe performance of job effectively requires narrowing the meaningful routine activities and attempting employing the job procedures in favor of public welfare through adding the green impact as well as removing them from the red tapes which reflect the firmness of procedures, to enable the job parties to make their job independently, and pushing them to gain priority in the competition layer. This is not attaining easily amidst the regulatory problems expressed by the complication of procedures, the thing which make identifying the problem of the study through the following question:
Should we make the complex of procedures and their firmness a way to adopt the idea of the green regulatory tapes supportin
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Many approaches have been developed over time to counter the bioavailability limitations of poorly soluble drugs. With advances in nanotechnology in recent decades, this issue has been approached through the formulation of drugs as nanocrystals. Nanocrystals consist of pure drug(s) and a minimum of surface active agent(s) required for stabilization. They are carrier-free submicron colloidal drug delivery systems with a mean particle size typically in the range of 200 - 500 nm. By reducing particle size to nanoscale, the surface area available for dissolution is increased, and thus bioavailability is enhanced. Drug nanocrystals constitute a versatile formulation approach to enhance the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of poorly
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If feminist philosophy in the context of feminist research focuses on how to produce an alternative knowledge and culture for women and forming anew awareness of their roles in the face of prevailing misconceptions then the topic of Islamic feminism is presented as a philosophical topic in the field of human knowledge to discuss how to produce an alternative knowledge of traditional knowledge prevailing in patriarchal societies to restore the balance of power and authority in the relationship between the sexes to create an effective feminist role in advocating for and defending womenś issues to achieve this Islamic feminism sought to establish an Islamic epistemology .
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In high-dimensional semiparametric regression, balancing accuracy and interpretability often requires combining dimension reduction with variable selection. This study intro- duces two novel methods for dimension reduction in additive partial linear models: (i) minimum average variance estimation (MAVE) combined with the adaptive least abso- lute shrinkage and selection operator (MAVE-ALASSO) and (ii) MAVE with smoothly clipped absolute deviation (MAVE-SCAD). These methods leverage the flexibility of MAVE for sufficient dimension reduction while incorporating adaptive penalties to en- sure sparse and interpretable models. The performance of both methods is evaluated through simulations using the mean squared error and variable selection cri
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The main objective of the present work is to find a method increases the efficiency of the airfoil that is used for blade in wind turbine, wing in aircraft, propeller and helicopter (like NACA 4412). By overcoming the separation of flow at high angle of attacks, a slotted airfoil had been used and solved numerically through connecting the pressure side in the bottom surface with the suction side in the top surface of the airfoil to energize the separated flow. Slot exit, width and slope were considered as a parameters of slot configuration to determine the effective design of consideration. Reynolds number was taken as [1.6 x106 ] and the angle of attacks were ranged from (0o - 20o ). The numerical solution with Ansys Fluent commercial prog
... Show MoreThis paper presents designing an adaptive state feedback controller (ASFC) for a magnetic levitation system (MLS), which is an unstable system and has high nonlinearity and represents a challenging control problem. First, a nonadaptive state feedback controller (SFC) is designed by linearization about a selected equilibrium point and designing a SFC by pole-placement method to achieve maximum overshoot of 1.5% and settling time of 1s (5% criterion). When the operating point changes, the designed controller can no longer achieve the design specifications, since it is designed based on a linearization about a different operating point. This gives rise to utilizing the adaptive control scheme to parameterize the state feedback controll
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