Rank-based predictors for response and prognosis of neoadjuvant taxane-anthracycline-based chemotherapy in breast cancer

For neoadjuvant taxane and anthracycline-based chemotherapy for breast cancer, patients with pathological complete response (pCR) have a favorable prognosis compared with patients with residual disease (RD). Although a number of pCR predictors based on microarray profiles have been proposed to guide neoadjuvant chemotherapy, most of these have not been independently validated in inter-laboratory datasets, possibly owing to the fact that microarray measurements are sensitive to experimental batch effects and inter-array data normalizations. In this study, we developed a rank-based method to tackle this difficulty. First, we extracted from two datasets a combination of gene pairs, each of which had opposing relative expression orders in patients with pCR and those with RD, and used these to build a pCR predictor. This pCR predictor was found to have sensitivities of 74 and 86 % and specificities of 71 and 68 % in another two independent datasets from multiple laboratories, and these results were better than the performances of three previously reported predictors. Considering that patients with minimal RD also tend to have a good prognosis, we then developed a prognosis predictor for RD as a complement to the pCR predictor, in order to identify a group of patients likely to have a good prognosis, taking into account both the RD level and the intrinsic risk factors. In the independent validation, there was a significant difference (P = 0.001) in distant relapse-free survival between the patients likely to and those not likely to have a good prognosis according to our prognosis predictor. In conclusion, the rank-based predictors for response and prognosis can accurately and robustly predict patients with improved prognosis who might benefit from neoadjuvant taxane and anthracycline-based chemotherapy.     

阵发性和持续性房颤的分类方法研究

目前,人们对房颤维持和终止的机制还没有完全了解,因此对阵发性房颤和持续性房颤的分类具有非常重要的研究意义。鉴于此,本研究提出一种新的分类方法。根据主成分分析从单导联心电信号中提取出房颤信号,其次计算提取到的房颤信号的特征,最后用分类器对阵发性和持续性房颤进行分类。提出将房颤波的复杂度作为房颤波波动复杂度的表征。对阵发性和持续性房颤分类的实验结果表明,预测的总正确率是90%。在1 000次随机性实验中,最高分类正确率可达到92%,平均正确率为77.12%。该方法可以很好的对两类房颤进行分类,对预测房颤的自发性终止有一定的指导意义。     

脑内源性光学成像中的图像增强处理

脑内源信号光学成像是一种二次成像技术,其信号微弱并带有皮层生理结构所决定的信号特征。选取有效的空间滤波方式能对图像的噪声进行抑制,使得微弱信号得以增强。本文针对脑内源性信号的光学成像,采用不同的线性与非线性空间滤波处理,并对噪声的抑制程度和图像细节保存程度进行讨论。结果显示非线性中值空域滤波对内源性光学图像去噪效果明显,并能保留丰富的细节特征,是适于脑内源性光学成像信号特点的图像增强技术。     

A comparison of vital signs charted by nurses with automated acquired values using waveform quality indices

Objective  

(1) To investigate if there exist any discrepancies between the values of vital signs charted by nurses and those recorded by bedside monitors for a group of patients admitted for neurocritical care. (2) To investigate possible interpretations of discrepancies by exploring information in the alarm messages and the raw waveform data from monitors.     

An efficient sliding window strategy for accurate location of eukaryotic protein coding regions

The sliding window is one of important factors that seriously affect the accuracy of coding region prediction and location for the methods based on power spectrum technique. It is very difficult to select the appropriate sliding step and the window length for different organisms. In this study, a novel sliding window strategy is proposed on the basis of power spectrum analysis for the accurate location of eukaryotic protein coding regions. The proposed sliding window strategy is very simple and the sliding step of window is changeable. Our tests show that the average location error for the novel method is 12 bases. Compared with the previous location error of 54 bases using the fixed sliding step, the novel sliding window strategy increased the location accuracy greatly. Further, the consumed CPU time to run the novel strategy is much shorter than the strategy of the fixed length sliding step. So, the computational complexity for the novel method is decreased greatly.     

远程医疗交易系统的设计

远程诊断的信息交换不仅涉及到声音和视频的传送。更重要的则是医疗文档的交换。除了医疗信息而外，信息的流程也同样重要。另外从长远的眼光来看，远程医疗必须纳入到正常的医疗交易系统才能够保证其可持续的发展。提出了远程医疗诊断交易系统的主要流程、实现模式、和关键组件。