Mallingrice9749

In clinical practice, standard endoscopic treatment of biliary stones fails in up to 10% of patients, and more invasive procedures such as percutaneous trans-hepatic interventions or surgery might become necessary. The aim of this multi-center retrospective study, based on prospectively-collected data, was to evaluate both the efficacy and the safety of Digital-Single Operator Cholangioscopy (D-SOC) to treat difficult biliary stones, in cases with a previous failure of conventional endoscopic methods.

Only patients with a previous failure of endoscopic standard treatment and a DSOC- based biliary stone treatment using electrohydraulic lithotripsy (EHL) or laser lithotripsy (LL) were included. The primary endpoint was to evaluate the stone clearance rate per procedure and per patient. Out of 1258 ERCP performed at our (three?) centers, 31 cholangioscopies in 21 patients were solely performed for the treatment of difficult biliary stones using EHL or LL.

A complete biliary stone removal was achieved in 67hods to treat biliary stones have failed. Therefore, D-SOC might be considered the new standard of care for these patients, being both, effective and safe.

In conclusion, our data indicate that digital D-SOC assisted biliary stone treatment is highly efficient for the treatment of difficult biliary stones even in such patients in whom previous conventional endoscopic methods to treat biliary stones have failed. Therefore, D-SOC might be considered the new standard of care for these patients, being both, effective and safe.

Three-dimensional (3D) vascular and metabolic imaging (VMI) of whole organs in rodents provides critical and important (patho)physiological information in studying animal models of vascular network.

Autofluorescence metabolic imaging has been used to evaluate mitochondrial metabolites such as nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and flavine adenine dinucleotide (FAD). Leveraging these autofluorescence images of whole organs of rodents, we have developed a 3D vascular segmentation technique to delineate the anatomy of the vasculature as well as mitochondrial metabolic distribution.

By measuring fluorescence from naturally occurring mitochondrial metabolites combined with light-absorbing properties of hemoglobin, we detected the 3D structure of the vascular tree of rodent lungs, kidneys, hearts, and livers using VMI. For lung VMI, an exogenous fluorescent dye was injected into the trachea for inflation and to separate the airways, confirming no overlap between the segmented vessels and airways.

The kidney vasculature from genetically engineered rats expressing endothelial-specific red fluorescent protein TdTomato confirmed a significant overlap with VMI. This approach abided by the "minimum work" hypothesis of the vascular network fitting to Murray's law. Finally, the vascular segmentation approach confirmed the vascular regression in rats, induced by ionizing radiation.

Simultaneous vascular and metabolic information extracted from the VMI provides quantitative diagnostic markers without the confounding effects of vascular stains, fillers, or contrast agents.

Simultaneous vascular and metabolic information extracted from the VMI provides quantitative diagnostic markers without the confounding effects of vascular stains, fillers, or contrast agents.

Collagen is the most abundant protein in vertebrates and is found in tissues that regularly experience tension, compression, and shear forces. However, the underlying mechanism of collagen fibril formation and remodeling is poorly understood.

We explore how a collagen monomer is visualized using fluorescence microscopy and how its spatial orientation is determined. Defining the orientation of collagen monomers is not a trivial problem, as the monomer has a weak contrast and is relatively small. It is possible to attach fluorescence tags for contrast, but the size is still a problem for detecting orientation using fluorescence microscopy.

We present two methods for detecting a monomer and classifying its orientation. A modified Gabor filter set and an automatic classifier trained by convolutional neural network based on a synthetic dataset were used.

By evaluating the performance of these two approaches with synthetic and experimental data, our results show that it is possible to determine the location and orientation with an error of ∼37  deg of a single monomer with fluorescence microscopy.

These findings can contribute to our understanding of collagen monomers interaction with collagen fibrils surface during fibril formation and remodeling.

These findings can contribute to our understanding of collagen monomers interaction with collagen fibrils surface during fibril formation and remodeling.

The use of the transscleral illumination approach has the potential to simplify the optical design of fundus cameras. In particular, this approach could allow the use of smaller and cheaper cameras that are easier to use by non-specialists, thereby facilitating a wider spread of eye disease screening programs.

Our aim was to investigate the suitability of transscleral illumination in a fundus camera system. In particular, we explored the impact of the illumination spectrum and the eye pigmentation on the quality of the image. buy GRL0617 These factors have never been systematically investigated before in the literature on transscleral illumination.

A fundus camera was constructed using transscleral illumination. We studied the influence of eye pigmentation and choice of illumination spectra on the image quality for a group of 10 individuals with varied skin pigmentation, ranging from pale white (North-European) to darkest brown (African). The influence of the light source spectrum on the image quality was assessed using wavelength filters.

There was a difference of a factor of 100 in the signal level of retinal images between individuals with low and high skin pigmentation. The image contrast was highest using illumination wavelengths of 500 to 600nm. The illumination level can be adjusted to obtain high-quality images for highly pigmented eyes while keeping the system eye-safe.

We have demonstrated that a fundus camera with transscleral illumination can provide high-quality images. However, the variations observed in scleral and retinal pigmentation in a practical setting require a system that must be able to adapt illumination and/or exposure to the individual patient.

We have demonstrated that a fundus camera with transscleral illumination can provide high-quality images. However, the variations observed in scleral and retinal pigmentation in a practical setting require a system that must be able to adapt illumination and/or exposure to the individual patient.