Ultrasound elastography as an adjuvant to conventional ultrasound in the preoperative assessment of axillary lymph nodes in suspected breast cancer: a pilot study.

AIMS: To compare the performance of ultrasound elastography with conventional ultrasound in the assessment of axillary lymph nodes in suspected breast cancer and whether ultrasound elastography as an adjunct to conventional ultrasound can increase the sensitivity of conventional ultrasound used alone. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifty symptomatic women with a sonographic suspicion for breast cancer underwent ultrasound elastography of the ipsilateral axilla concurrent with conventional ultrasound being performed as part of triple assessment. Elastograms were visually scored, strain measurements calculated and node area and perimeter measurements taken. Theoretical biopsy cut points were selected. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive values (NPV) were calculated and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed and compared for elastograms and conventional ultrasound images with surgical histology as the reference standard. RESULTS: The mean age of the women was 57 years. Twenty-nine out of 50 of the nodes were histologically negative on surgical histology and 21 were positive. The sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV for conventional ultrasound were 76, 78, 70, and 81%, respectively; 90, 86, 83, and 93%, respectively, for visual ultrasound elastography; and for strain scoring, 100, 48, 58 and 100%, respectively. There was no significant difference between any of the node measurements CONCLUSIONS: Initial experience with ultrasound elastography of axillary lymph nodes, showed that it is more sensitive than conventional ultrasound in detecting abnormal nodes in the axilla in cases of suspected breast cancer. The specificity remained acceptable and ultrasound elastography used as an adjunct to conventional ultrasound has the potential to improve the performance of conventional ultrasound alone.

Using a semiconductor optical amplifier integrated with a pump laser for mid-span spectral inversion and wavelength conversion

A semiconductor optical amplifier monolithically integrated with a distributed feedback pump laser is used for non-degenerate four wave mixing applications. Experimental results are presented which illustrate the use of this compact device for both wavelength conversion and dispersion compensation applications at high data rates.

A novel design of Thermally Actuated Magnetization Flux pump for high temperature superconducting bulks

High temperature superconductors, such as melt-processed YBCO bulks, have great advantages on trapping strong magnetic fields in liquid nitrogen. To enable them to function well, there are some traditional ways of magnetizing them, in which the YBCO bulks are magnetized instantly under a very strong source of magnetic field. These ways would consume great amounts of power to make the superconductors trap as much field as possible. Thermally Actuated Magnetization (TAM) Flux pump has been proved a perfect substitution for these expensive methods by using a relatively small magnet as the source. In this way, the field is developed gradually over many pulses. Unlike conventional flux pumping ways, the TAM does not drive the superconductor normal during the process of magnetization. In former experiments for the flux pump, some fundamental tests were done. In this paper, the experiment system is advanced to a new level with better temperature control to the thermal waves moving in the Gadolinium and with less air gap for the flux lines sweeping through the superconductor. This experiment system F leads to a stronger accumulation of the magnetic field trapped in the YBCO bulk. We also tried different ways of sending the thermal waves and found out that the pumping effect is closely related to the power of the heaters and the on and off time. © 2010 IEEE.

Co-expression of CD173 (H2) and CD174 (Lewis Y) with CD44 suggests that fucosylated histo-blood group antigens are markers of breast cancer-initiating cells

Histo-blood group antigens CD173 (H2) and CD174 (Lewis Y) are known to be developmentally regulated carbohydrate antigens which are expressed to a varying degree on many human carcinomas. We hypothesized that they might represent markers of cancer-initiating cells (or cancer stem cells, CSC). In order to test this hypothesis, we examined the co-expression of CD173 and CD174 with stem cell markers CD44 and CD133 by flow cytometry analysis, immunocytochemistry, and immunohistochemistry on cell lines and tissue sections from breast cancer. In three breast cancer cell lines, the percentage of CD173(+)/CD44(+) cells ranged from 17% to > 60% and of CD174(+)/CD44(+) from 21% to 57%. In breast cancer tissue sections from 15 patients, up to 50% of tumor cells simultaneously expressed CD173, CD174, and CD44 antigens. Co-expression of CD173 and CD174 with CD133 was also observed, but to a lesser percentage. Co-immunoprecipitation and sandwich ELISA experiments on breast cancer cell lines suggested that CD173 and CD174 are carried on the CD44 molecule. The results show that in these tissues CD173 (H2) and CD174 (LeY) are associated with CD44 expression, suggesting that these carbohydrate antigens are markers of cancer-initiating cells or of early progenitors of breast carcinomas.

Somatic mutations of mitochondrial genome in early stage breast cancer

The complete mitochondrial genomes of the primary cancerous, matched paracancerous normal and distant normal tissues from 10 early-stage breast cancer patients were analyzed in this study, with special attempt (i) to investigate whether the reported high

Optimization of thermal material in a flux pump system with high temperature superconductor

Superconductors are known for the ability to trap magnetic field. A thermally actuated magnetization (TAM) flux pump is a system that utilizes the thermal material to generate multiple small magnetic pulses resulting in a high magnetization accumulated in the superconductor. Ferrites are a good thermal material candidate for the future TAM flux pumps because the relative permeability of ferrite changes significantly with temperature, particularly around the Curie temperature. Several soft ferrites have been specially synthesized to reduce the cost and improve the efficiency of the TAM flux pump. Various ferrite compositions have been tested under a temperature variation ranging from 77K to 300K. The experimental results of the synthesized soft ferrites-Cu 0.3 Zn 0.7Ti 0.04Fe 1.96O 4, including the Curie temperature, magnetic relative permeability and the volume magnetization (emu/cm3), are presented in this paper. The results are compared with original thermal material, gadolinium, used in the TAM flux pump system.-Cu 0.3 Zn 0.7Ti 0.04 Fe 1.96O 4 holds superior characteristics and is believed to be a suitable material for next generation TAM flux pump. © 2011 IEEE.