Segmentation of abdominal ultrasound images of the prostate using a priori information and an adapted noise filter.

This article discusses a method for the automatic segmentation of trans-abdominal ultrasound images of the prostate. Segmentation begins with the application of a filter to enhance the contours without modifying the image information. It combines adaptive morphological filtering and median filtering to detect the noise-containing regions and smooth them. A heuristic optimization algorithm searches for the contour initialized from a prostate model. The performance of the algorithm was tested by comparing the resulting contours with those obtained by manual segmentation. The average distance between the contours was 2.5 mm and the average coverage index was 93%.     

Photodynamic therapy and urothelial carcinoma

PurposePhotodynamic therapy (PDT) is an innovative therapeutic modality in urologic oncology.Material and methodsWe reviewed the current literature on principles and modalities of PDT in urothelial and penile oncology.ResultsPDT has been tested for the treatment recurrent superficial bladder tumors and in situ carcinoma. Carcinologic efficacy has been observed with first generation photosensitizer. The lack of selectivity for tumoral cells was responsible of serious adverse events. Development of selective photosensitizers has reduced the importance of side effects. Data concerning PDT for upper urinary tract urethra and carcinoma are still limited.ConclusionFirst PDT clinical applications in urothelial oncology have shown some effectiveness at the cost of significant morbidity. The development of selective photosensitizers should help to reduce side effects.     

Pre-therapy 18F-FDG PET quantitative parameters help in predicting the response to radioimmunotherapy in non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Purpose  

Radioimmunotherapy (RIT) is a new treatment option for patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Response to RIT currently remains difficult to predict using conventional prognostic factors and could be refined using functional imaging. The goal of this work is to evaluate the value of ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) in predicting response to Yttrium 90-labeled monoclonal antibodies for patients with NHL.     

A method for paraplegic upper-body posture estimation during standing: a pilot study for rehabilitation purposes

This paper presents a contribution for restoring standing in paraplegia while using functional electrical stimulation (FES). Movement generation induced by FES remains mostly open looped and stimulus intensities are tuned empirically. To design an efficient closed-loop control, a preliminary study has been carried out to investigate the relationship between body posture and voluntary upper body movements. A methodology is proposed to estimate body posture in the sagittal plane using force measurements exerted on supporting handles during standing. This is done by setting up constraints related to the geometric equations of a two-dimensional closed chain model and the hand–handle interactions. All measured quantities are subject to an uncertainty assumed unknown but bounded. The set membership estimation problem is solved via interval analysis. Guaranteed uncertainty bounds are computed for the estimated postures. In order to test the feasibility of our methodology, experiments were carried out with complete spinal cord injured patients.