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.
Nowadays, cloud computing has attracted the attention of large companies due to its high potential, flexibility, and profitability in providing multi-sources of hardware and software to serve the connected users. Given the scale of modern data centers and the dynamic nature of their resource provisioning, we need effective scheduling techniques to manage these resources while satisfying both the cloud providers and cloud users goals. Task scheduling in cloud computing is considered as NP-hard problem which cannot be easily solved by classical optimization methods. Thus, both heuristic and meta-heuristic techniques have been utilized to provide optimal or near-optimal solutions within an acceptable time frame for such problems. In th
... Show MoreMass transfer correlations for iron rotating cylinder electrode in chloride/sulphate solution, under isothermal and
controlled heat transfer conditions, were derived. Limiting current density values for the oxygen reduction reaction from
potentiostatic experiments at different bulk temperatures and various turbulent flow rates, under isothermal and heat
transfer conditions, were used for such derivation. The corelations were analogous to that obtained by Eisenberg et all
and other workers.
A novel technique Sumudu transform Adomian decomposition method (STADM), is employed to handle some kinds of nonlinear time-fractional equations. We demonstrate that this method finds the solution without discretization or restrictive assumptions. This method is efficient, simple to implement, and produces good results. The fractional derivative is described in the Caputo sense. The solutions are obtained using STADM, and the results show that the suggested technique is valid and applicable and provides a more refined convergent series solution. The MATLAB software carried out all the computations and graphics. Moreover, a graphical representation was made for the solution of some examples. For integer and fractional order problems, solutio
... Show MoreIn this research, a simple experiment in the field of agriculture was studied, in terms of the effect of out-of-control noise as a result of several reasons, including the effect of environmental conditions on the observations of agricultural experiments, through the use of Discrete Wavelet transformation, specifically (The Coiflets transform of wavelength 1 to 2 and the Daubechies transform of wavelength 2 To 3) based on two levels of transform (J-4) and (J-5), and applying the hard threshold rules, soft and non-negative, and comparing the wavelet transformation methods using real data for an experiment with a size of 26 observations. The application was carried out through a program in the language of MATLAB. The researcher concluded that
... Show MoreCeruloplasmin (Cp) is one of the acute phase protein, in this review ,we studied the level of ceruloplasmin with copper (Cu) and iron in 90 patients with coronary heart diseas ( those patients are divided into three groups, whom are stable angina , unstable angina and myocardial infarction compared with 30 healthy volunteers) and the roles of them as diagnostic and prognostic tools.The diagnosis was attend by a clinical examination carried out by the consult medical staff in Ibn AL-Nafis hospital. The result: ceruloplasmin recorded a significantly(p<0.05)higher level in all patient groups compared with the control, so this result supports the hypothesis that a high serum ceruloplasmin level is a risk factor for coronary heart di
... Show MoreA nonlinear filter for smoothing color and gray images
corrupted by Gaussian noise is presented in this paper. The proposed
filter designed to reduce the noise in the R,G, and B bands of the
color images and preserving the edges. This filter applied in order to
prepare images for further processing such as edge detection and
image segmentation.
The results of computer simulations show that the proposed
filter gave satisfactory results when compared with the results of
conventional filters such as Gaussian low pass filter and median filter
by using Cross Correlation Coefficient (ccc) criteria.
In the current worldwide health crisis produced by coronavirus disease (COVID-19), researchers and medical specialists began looking for new ways to tackle the epidemic. According to recent studies, Machine Learning (ML) has been effectively deployed in the health sector. Medical imaging sources (radiography and computed tomography) have aided in the development of artificial intelligence(AI) strategies to tackle the coronavirus outbreak. As a result, a classical machine learning approach for coronavirus detection from Computerized Tomography (CT) images was developed. In this study, the convolutional neural network (CNN) model for feature extraction and support vector machine (SVM) for the classification of axial
... Show MoreThe aim of the research is to measure the relationship and effect of the application of total production maintenance TPM in the operational strategy, as it is considered one of the most important strategies for the process of restoring production losses because of inefficient equipment. Competitive edge in the global market by upgrading the operational strategies of OS in the application of TPM in those institutions that apply both H-OS-oriented and P-OS-oriented strategies where the strategy has been identified as a critical success factor. The aim of this study is to attempt to consider the application of comprehensive productive maintenance in industrial establishments