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.
Abstract:
In light of globalization and internationalization of financial markets, issues arising from financial crises have become increasingly serious and fundamental, creating a lot of debate among experts around the world. So, many studies have attempted to investigate what measures can be taken to detect and prevent crises before they devastate the economies.
Therefore, this paper examines the Effectiveness of the Monetary Policy (MP) to Avoid, Reduce or Treat the Financial Crisis in Malaysia. Scholars have yet to agree on the issue
... Show MoreOne of the most important problems that would continuously face the Higher education organizations is how to improve the service level presented by them, and how this can lead to increase demand for services of this organizations.As this issue has exhausted many organizations pushed some of them to withdraw from the market Because of weaknesses in their services. Here lies the importance of this matter to be given more attention in order to maintain the organization competitive position. According to that, The selection of the research title (The Impact of Quality on the Level of the University Service Request) which seeks to measure the impact of service quality on the level of demand, At a time when world&
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The goal of this work is to check the presence of PNS (photon number splitting) attack in quantum cryptography system based on BB84 protocol, and to get a maximum secure key length as possible. This was achieved by randomly interleaving decoy states with mean photon numbers of 5.38, 1.588 and 0.48 between the signal states with mean photon numbers of 2.69, 0.794 and 0.24. The average length for a secure key obtained from our system discarding the cases with Eavesdropping was equal to 125 with 20 % decoy states and 82 with 50% decoy states for mean photon number of 0.794 for signal states and 1.588 for decoy states.
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Thin films of Magnetite have been deposited on Galvanized Steel (G-S) alloy using RF-reactive magnetron sputtering technique and protection efficiency of the corrosion of G-S. A Three-Electrodes Cell was used in saline water (3.5 % NaCl) solution at different temperatures (298, 308, 318 & 328K) using potentiostatic techniques with. Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and fitting impedance data via Frequency Response Analysis (FRA) were applied to G-S alloy with Fe3O4 and tested in 3.5 % NaCl solution at 298K.Results taken from Nyquist and Bode plots were analyzed using software provided with the instrument. The results obtained show that the rate of corrosion of G.S alloy increased with increasing the temperatures from 298 t
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Aim of the study: Using surface roughness and tensile bond strength tests, the objective of this investigation was to ascertain the impact of laser surface modification on the binding strength of injectable thermoplastic acrylic denture base material to acrylic-based soft-liner material. Materials and methods: Acrylic base soft liner material was bonded to injectable thermoplastic acrylic resin (Deflex). Forty specimens were created (20 disc, 20 dumbbells) 10 of each specimen type as control specimens, and 10 were treated with nano pulse Nd: YAG laser. The data were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis test and unpaired t-test (a=.05) and the roughness test was performed utilizing a double column universal test machine. Results: Compar
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Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) are enzymes that included, in a more range of detoxifying reactions by conjugation of glutathione, to electrophilic material. Polymorphisms n the genes that responsible of GSTs affect, the function of the GSTs. GSTs play an active role in protection of cell against oxidative stress mechanism. Polymorphisms of GSTP1 at codon 105 amino acids forms GSTP1 important site for bind of hydrophobic electrophiles and the substitution of Ile/Val affect substrate specially catalytic activity of the enzyme and may correlate with reach to different diseases in human like diabetes mellitus type2 disease. Correlation between these polymorphisms and changes in the parameters file of diabetic patients has also bee
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Polynomial IIR digital filters play a crucial role in the process of image data compression. The main purpose of designing polynomial IIR digital filters of the integer parameters space and introduce efficient filters to compress image data using a singular value decomposition algorithm. The proposed work is designed to break down the complex topic into bite-sized pieces of image data compression through the lens of compression image data using Infinite Impulse Response Filters. The frequency response of the filters is measured using a real signal with an automated panoramic measuring system developed in the virtual instrument environment. The analysis of the output signal showed that there are no limit cycles with a maximum radius
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Four major factories (Petroleum Refineries Company, Detergents Plant, Thermal Power Plant, and Gaseous Power Plant) are located to the north of Baiji City. They release pollutants in form of gases, liquids and solids; they find their way to the surrounding environment. To assess the environmental pollution of the area, 18 samples of surface soil distributed around the industrial establishments were collected and analyzed to determine the concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) components which are often targets in the environmental checking. Identification and quantification of the 16 PAHs components was accomplished using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) had a model Shimadzu LC-10 AVP. The total concentratio
... Show MoreThe research aims to clarify the COBIT5 framework for IT governance and to develop of a criterion based on Balanced Scorecard that contributes in measuring the performance of IT governance. To achieve these goals, the researchers adopted the deductive approach in the design of balanced scorecard to measure the IT governance at the Bank of Baghdad that was chosen because it relied heavily on IT.
The research has reached a number of conclusions, the most important of which is that the performance of IT department in the Bank of Baghdad falls within the good level that requires constant monitoring, the most committed items of Balanced Scorecard by the Bank were customer, internal operation, growth and finally the financial item; IT
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