Mesh-based vs. Image-based Statistical Appearance Model of the Human Femur: a Preliminary Comparison Study for the Creation of Finite Element Meshes

Statistical models have been recently introduced in computational orthopaedics to investigate the bone mechanical properties across several populations. A fundamental aspect for the construction of statistical models concerns the establishment of accurate anatomical correspondences among the objects of the training dataset. Various methods have been proposed to solve this problem such as mesh morphing or image registration algorithms. The objective of this study is to compare a mesh-based and an image-based statistical appearance model approaches for the creation of nite element(FE) meshes. A computer tomography (CT) dataset of 157 human left femurs was used for the comparison. For each approach, 30 finite element meshes were generated with the models. The quality of the obtained FE meshes was evaluated in terms of volume, size and shape of the elements. Results showed that the quality of the meshes obtained with the image-based approach was higher than the quality of the mesh-based approach. Future studies are required to evaluate the impact of this finding on the final mechanical simulations.

A Skull-Stripping Filter for ITK

Skull-stripping (or brain extraction) is an important pre-processing step in neuroimage analysis. This document describes a skull-stripping filter implemented using the Insight Toolkit ITK, which we named itk::StripTsImageFilter. It is a composite filter based on existing ITK classes. The filter has been implemented with usability, robustness, speed and versatility in mind, rather than accuracy. This makes it useful for many pre-processing tasks in neuroimage analysis. This paper is accompanied by the source code, input data and a testing environment.

LTE uplink scheduling - flow level analysis

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a cellular technology foreseen to extend the capacity and improve the performance of current 3G cellular networks. A key mechanism in the LTE traffic handling is the packet scheduler, which is in charge of allocating resources to active flows in both the frequency and time dimension. In this paper we present a performance comparison of three distinct scheduling schemes for LTE uplink with main focus on the impact of flow-level dynamics resulting from the random user behaviour. We apply a combined analytical/simulation approach which enables fast evaluation of flow-level performance measures. The results show that by considering flow-level dynamics we are able to observe performance trends that would otherwise stay hidden if only packet-level analysis is performed.

Application of 3D documentation and geometric reconstruction methods in traffic accident analysis: with high resolution surface scanning, radiological MSCT/MRI scanning and real data based animation

The examination of traffic accidents is daily routine in forensic medicine. An important question in the analysis of the victims of traffic accidents, for example in collisions between motor vehicles and pedestrians or cyclists, is the situation of the impact. Apart from forensic medical examinations (external examination and autopsy), three-dimensional technologies and methods are gaining importance in forensic investigations. Besides the post-mortem multi-slice computed tomography (MSCT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the documentation and analysis of internal findings, highly precise 3D surface scanning is employed for the documentation of the external body findings and of injury-inflicting instruments. The correlation of injuries of the body to the injury-inflicting object and the accident mechanism are of great importance. The applied methods include documentation of the external and internal body and the involved vehicles and inflicting tools as well as the analysis of the acquired data. The body surface and the accident vehicles with their damages were digitized by 3D surface scanning. For the internal findings of the body, post-mortem MSCT and MRI were used. The analysis included the processing of the obtained data to 3D models, determination of the driving direction of the vehicle, correlation of injuries to the vehicle damages, geometric determination of the impact situation and evaluation of further findings of the accident. In the following article, the benefits of the 3D documentation and computer-assisted, drawn-to-scale 3D comparisons of the relevant injuries with the damages to the vehicle in the analysis of the course of accidents, especially with regard to the impact situation, are shown on two examined cases.

Analysis Methodology for Flow-level Evaluation of a Hybrid Mobile-Sensor Network

Our society uses a large diversity of co-existing wired and wireless networks in order to satisfy its communication needs. A cooper- ation between these networks can benefit performance, service availabil- ity and deployment ease, and leads to the emergence of hybrid networks. This position paper focuses on a hybrid mobile-sensor network identify- ing potential advantages and challenges of its use and defining feasible applications. The main value of the paper, however, is in the proposed analysis approach to evaluate the performance at the mobile network side given the mixed mobile-sensor traffic. The approach combines packet- level analysis with modelling of flow-level behaviour and can be applied for the study of various application scenarios. In this paper we consider two applications with distinct traffic models namely multimedia traffic and best-effort traffic.

Sex Differences in Semantic Processing: Event-Related Brain Potentials Distinguish between Lower and Higher Order Semantic Analysis during Word Reading

Behavioral studies suggest that women and men differ in the strategic elaboration of verbally encoded information especially in the absence of external task demand. However, measuring such covert processing requires other than behavioral data. The present study used event-related potentials to compare sexes in lower and higher order semantic processing during the passive reading of semantically related and unrelated word pairs. Women and men showed the same early context effect in the P1-N1 transition period. This finding indicates that the initial lexical-semantic access is similar in men and women. In contrast, sexes differed in higher order semantic processing. Women showed an earlier and longer lasting context effect in the N400 accompanied by larger signal strength in temporal networks similarly recruited by men and women. The results suggest that women spontaneously conduct a deeper semantic analysis. This leads to faster processing of related words in the active neural networks as reflected in a shorter stability of the N400 map in women. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that there is a selective sex difference in the controlled semantic analysis during passive word reading that is not reflected in different functional organization but in the depth of processing.

Quantitative proteome analysis in cardiovascular physiology and pathology. I. Data processing

Methodological evaluation of the proteomic analysis of cardiovascular-tissue material has been performed with a special emphasis on establishing examinations that allow reliable quantitative analysis of silver-stained readouts. Reliability, reproducibility, robustness and linearity were addressed and clarified. In addition, several types of normalization procedures were evaluated and new approaches are proposed. It has been found that the silver-stained readout offers a convenient approach for quantitation if a linear range for gel loading is defined. In addition, a broad range of a 10-fold input (loading 20-200 microg per gel) fulfills the linearity criteria, although at the lowest input (20 microg) a portion of protein species will remain undetected. The method is reliable and reproducible within a range of 65-200 microg input. The normalization procedure using the sum of all spot intensities from a silver-stained 2D pattern has been shown to be less reliable than other approaches, namely, normalization through median or through involvement of interquartile range. A special refinement of the normalization through virtual segmentation of pattern, and calculation of normalization factor for each stratum provides highly satisfactory results. The presented results not only provide evidence for the usefulness of silver-stained gels for quantitative evaluation, but they are directly applicable to the research endeavor of monitoring alterations in cardiovascular pathophysiology.