Objectives: Recently, there have been important advances in the clinical application of targeted hybrid near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent-radioactive tracers. ICG-99mTc-nanocolloid, for example, is already being used by some centres for sentinel lymph node biopsy in head and neck cancer. The radioactive component allows imaging at depths which would not be possible with NIR alone and, once exposed, the NIR fluorescence reporter can be imaged at very high resolution. Gamma detection is currently carried out with a separate hand-held gamma camera or with a non-imaging probe. Visualisation of NIR fluorescence during surgery requires a dedicated NIR camera, several of which are available commercially. We describe a novel hand-held hybrid NIR-gamma small field of view camera, capable of displaying co-aligned images from both modalities, which can be fused into one image or viewed separately. This study is a preliminary investigation of the performance of the fluorescence component of this camera, including phantom studies and first images from a preclinical pilot study. Methods: The hybrid camera consists of a 1500 µm thick thallium doped caesium iodide columnar (CsI:Tl) scintillator coupled to an electron multiplying charged coupled device (EMCCD). A 1.0mm diameter tungsten pinhole collimator gives a 40mm x 40mm nominal field of view for an 8mm x 8mm CCD detection area. A fluorescence camera was aligned to provide the same field of view as the gamma camera with an LED ring as the excitation source. The performance of the fluorescence imaging was quantified in this study for the fluorophores ICG and IRDye800CW (CW800) using a range of bespoke phantom experiments. In vivo images were also obtained from a preclinical study of a targeted hybrid tracer (cRGD-CW800-TCO + TCO-DOTA-111In) in mice with HT29 colorectal cancer xenografts. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The portable hybrid camera prototype has been shown to successfully image dual NIR-gamma tracers using both in vitro and in vivo experimental models. With further development, this camera could be used intraoperatively, offering the benefits of gamma imaging at depth in tissues and high resolution surface NIR fluorescence imaging in a single imaging system.
The present study cognitive aims to investigate the negation phenomenon in American political discourse under Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) principles. The research sample includes two speeches given by Clinton and Trump in their election campaigns in 2016. Since the nature of the study follows the social-cognitive approach, the researcher adopted two models of analysis to achieve the study’s objectives: First, the theoretical framework of MST (developed by Fauconnier (1994), Fauconnier and Sweetser (1996) to examine meaning construction resulting from building different levels of negative mental spaces by two different genders the selected speeches. Second, pragmatic model to examine the role of gender from the functional per
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Wellbore instability is a significant problem faced during drilling operations and causes loss of circulation, caving, stuck pipe, and well kick or blowout. These problems take extra time to treat and increase the Nonproductive Time (NPT). This paper aims to review the factors that influence the stability of wellbores and know the methods that have been reached to reduce them. Based on a current survey, the factors that affect the stability of the wellbore are far-field stress, rock mechanical properties, natural fractures, pore pressure, wellbore trajectory, drilling fluid chemicals, mobile formations, naturally over-pressured shale collapse, mud weight, temperature, and time. Also, the most suitable ways to reduce well
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This paper studies the demonstratives as deictic expressions in Standard Arabic and English by outlining their phonological, syntactic and semantic properties in the two languages. On the basis of the outcome of this outline, a contrastive study of the linguistic properties of this group of deictic expressions in the two languages is conducted next. The aim is to find out what generalizations could be made from the results of this contrastive study.
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A shocking third species emerged from a family of coronaviruses (CoV) in late 2019 following viruses causing SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-CoV) in 2003 and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-CoV) in 2012; it’s a novel coronavirus now called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; formerly called 2019-nCoV). First emerging in China, it has spread rapidly across the globe, giving rise to significant social and economic costs and imposing severe strain on healthcare systems. Since many attempts to control viral spread has been futile, the only old practice of containment including city lockdown and social distancing are working to some extent. Unfortunately, specific antiviral drugs and vaccines remain u
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The main objective of this work is to propose a new routing protocol for wireless sensor network employed to serve IoT systems. The routing protocol has to adapt with different requirements in order to enhance the performance of IoT applications. The link quality, node depth and energy are used as metrics to make routing decisions. Comparison with other protocols is essential to show the improvements achieved by this work, thus protocols designed to serve the same purpose such as AODV, REL and LABILE are chosen to compare the proposed routing protocol with. To add integrative and holistic, some of important features are added and tested such as actuating and mobility. These features are greatly required by some of IoT applications and im
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BACKGROUND: Coronavirus current pandemic (COVID-19) is the striking subject worldwide hitting countries in an unexplained non-universal pattern. Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine was an adopted recent justification depending on its non-specific immune activation properties. Still the problem of post-vaccine short duration of protection needs to be solved. The same protective mechanism was identified in active or latent tuberculosis (TB). For each single patient of active TB, there are about nine cases of asymptomatic latent TB apparently normal individuals living within the community without restrictions carrying benefits of immune activation and involved in re-infection cycles in an excellent example of repeated immunity tr
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