Bidirectional Barbed Suture for Bladder Neck Reconstruction, Posterior Reconstruction and Vesicourethral Anastomosis During Robot Assisted Radical Prostatectomy

Background: The urethrovesical anastomosis is a particular challenging step of robot assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP). Failure to achieve a watertight anastomosis is associated with postoperative urinary leak and its consequences, which include paralytic ileus, prolonged catheterization, urinary peritonitis and possibly re-intervention. The bidirectional barbed suture is a new technology that may lead to improve the quality of the urethrovesical anastomosis. Objective: To present our surgical technique of urethrovesical anastomosis, bladder neck reconstruction and posterior reconstruction, using a bidirectional barbed suture. Material and methods: The bladder neck reconstruction, posterior reconstruction and vesicourethral anastomosis were performed using a 2-0 synthetic absorbable bidirectional monofilament barbed suture Results: All cases were finished successfully without major complication or conversion to laparoscopic or open surgery. Conclusion: The authors successfully modified their RARP technique to take advantage of the properties of the bidirectional barbed suture. Comparative studies that evaluate objective outcomes such as leakage rates and operative time are needed to definitely establish the benefits of this device in comparison to the traditional absorbable monofilament. (C) 2011 AEU. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.

Development of an Autonomous Robot for Gas Storage Spheres Inspection

Inspection for corrosion of gas storage spheres at the welding seam lines must be done periodically. Until now this inspection is being done manually and has a high cost associated to it and a high risk of inspection personel injuries. The Brazilian Petroleum Company, Petrobras, is seeking cost reduction and personel safety by the use of autonomous robot technology. This paper presents the development of a robot capable of autonomously follow a welding line and transporting corrosion measurement sensors. The robot uses a pair of sensors each composed of a laser source and a video camera that allows the estimation of the center of the welding line. The mechanical robot uses four magnetic wheels to adhere to the sphere's surface and was constructed in a way that always three wheels are in contact with the sphere's metallic surface which guarantees enough magnetic atraction to hold the robot in the sphere's surface all the time. Additionally, an independently actuated table for attaching the corrosion inspection sensors was included for small position corrections. Tests were conducted at the laboratory and in a real sphere showing the validity of the proposed approach and implementation.

Assessing joint effusion and bone changes of the head of the mandible in MR images of symptomatic patients

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between degenerative bone changes of the head of the mandible and the presence of joint effusion (JE). This study was based on sagittal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reports of 148 temporomandibular joints (TMJs) of 74 patients complaining of pain and/or dysfunction in the TMJ area. The mandible heads were surveyed for osteoarthritis characteristics, which were classified as osteophytosis, sclerosis or erosion. The presence of JE was checked whenever high signal intensity was observed in the articular space. The results evidenced the presence of bone changes in 30% of the sample. Osteophytes and erosions were the changes most commonly observed. JE was reported in 10% of TMJs. The results from the statistical tests revealed that bone changes in the head of the mandible are associated with the presence of JE.

MR-Radix: a multi-relational data mining algorithm

Abstract Background Once multi-relational approach has emerged as an alternative for analyzing structured data such as relational databases, since they allow applying data mining in multiple tables directly, thus avoiding expensive joining operations and semantic losses, this work proposes an algorithm with multi-relational approach. Methods Aiming to compare traditional approach performance and multi-relational for mining association rules, this paper discusses an empirical study between PatriciaMine - an traditional algorithm - and its corresponding multi-relational proposed, MR-Radix. Results This work showed advantages of the multi-relational approach in performance over several tables, which avoids the high cost for joining operations from multiple tables and semantic losses. The performance provided by the algorithm MR-Radix shows faster than PatriciaMine, despite handling complex multi-relational patterns. The utilized memory indicates a more conservative growth curve for MR-Radix than PatriciaMine, which shows the increase in demand of frequent items in MR-Radix does not result in a significant growth of utilized memory like in PatriciaMine. Conclusion The comparative study between PatriciaMine and MR-Radix confirmed efficacy of the multi-relational approach in data mining process both in terms of execution time and in relation to memory usage. Besides that, the multi-relational proposed algorithm, unlike other algorithms of this approach, is efficient for use in large relational databases.

Reasoning about shadows in a mobile robot environment

This paper describes a logic-based formalism for qualitative spatial reasoning with cast shadows (Perceptual Qualitative Relations on Shadows, or PQRS) and presents results of a mobile robot qualitative self-localisation experiment using this formalism. Shadow detection was accomplished by mapping the images from the robot’s monocular colour camera into a HSV colour space and then thresholding on the V dimension. We present results of selflocalisation using two methods for obtaining the threshold automatically: in one method the images are segmented according to their grey-scale histograms, in the other, the threshold is set according to a prediction about the robot’s location, based upon a qualitative spatial reasoning theory about shadows. This theory-driven threshold search and the qualitative self-localisation procedure are the main contributions of the present research. To the best of our knowledge this is the first work that uses qualitative spatial representations both to perform robot self-localisation and to calibrate a robot’s interpretation of its perceptual input.