Introduction The Hybrid Gamma Camera (HGC) is being developed to enhance the localisation of radiopharmaceutical uptake in targeted tissues during surgical procedures such as sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy. Purpose To assess the capability of the HGC, a lymph-node-contrast (LNC) phantom was constructed for an evaluative study simulating medical scenarios of varying radioactivity concentration and SLN size. Materials and methods The phantom was constructed using two methyl methacrylate PMMA plates (8 mm thick). The SLNs were simulated by drilling circular wells of diameters ranging between 10 mm and 2.5 mm (16 wells in total) in one plate. These simulated SLNs were placed underneath scattering material with thicknesses ranging between 5 mm and 40 mm. The second plate contains four rectangular wells to simulate background activity uptake surrounding the SLNs. The activity used ranged between 4 MBq and 0.025 MBq for the SLNs. The background activity was 1/10 of the SLNs activity. The collimator to source distance was 120 mm. Results Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) analysis and spatial resolution measurements of the simulated SLN were used to compare the imaging sets over acquisition times ranging between 60s and 240s. The HGC successfully detected 87.5% to 100% of the SLNs through 20mm of scattering material, and it could detect 75% to 93.75% of the SLNs through 40mm of scattering material. Measurement of Full-Width-at-Half-Maximum (FWHM) for the detected SLNs ranged between 9.5 mm and 12 mm. Conclusion The HGC is capable of detecting low activity uptake in small SLNs indicating its usefulness as an intraoperative imaging system during surgical SLN procedures.
The analysis of detective novels has taken different aspects. The linguistic analysis of them, for example, has tackled the linguistic systems of morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. In line with the linguistic analysis, this study explores the various pragmatic and stylistic devices realized through detective novels for the purpose of misdirecting and deceiving the reader. The problem is that when readers try to reach to the truth, they face difficulties. They might not reach to the right solution or infer wrong conclusions because writers use some techniques to hide the truth and mislead them. This study aims at examining these techniques and devices; namely, Grice's Maxims and ambiguity as pragmatic devices on the
... Show MoreIn the last years, the self-balancing platform has become one of the most common candidates to use in many applications such as flight, biomedical fields, industry. This paper introduced the simulated model of a proposed self-balancing platform that described the self–balancing attitude in (X-axis, Y-axis, or both axis) under the influence of road disturbance. To simulate the self-balanced platform's performance during the tilt, an integration between Solidworks, Simscape, and Simulink toolboxes in MATLAB was used. The platform's dynamic model was drawn in SolidWorks and exported as a STEP file used in the Simscape Multibody environment. The system is controlled using the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) co
... Show MoreAmong the available chaotic modulation schemes, differential chaos shift keying (DSCK) offers the perfect noise performance. The power consumption of DCSK is high since it sends chaotic signal in both of 1 and 0 transmission, so it does not represent the optimal choice for some applications like indoor wireless sensing where power consumption is a critical issue. In this paper a novel noncoherent chaotic communication scheme called differential chaos on-off keying (DCOOK) is proposed as a solution of this problem. With the proposed scheme, the DCOOK signal have a structure similar to chaos on-off keying (COOK) scheme with improved performance in noisy and multipath channels by introducing the concept of differential coherency used in DCS
... Show MoreJoseph Curtis wrote in his book (Introduction to Semiotics narrative and rhetoric) on the development of a semiotic project in exploring the meaning of communion. The book is rich in theoretical and analytical benefits both in the approach of texts and in the pursuit of letters in search of mechanisms of scriptural and scriptural generation and mechanics in narrative production, especially as the book offers exercises that help to assess the distance separating the narrative spread from the sin of the text, for the semiotics, Refers to the theoretical developments of the science of relations, through the combination of conventional definitions and the representative and comparative limitations, to provide an approach to the application o
... Show MoreSynthetic anti-TB drugs are being used to treat tuberculosis (TB) as they are effective, however, they are accompanied by many side effects. The disease has remained largely uncured till date. The use of plant extracts or phytochemicals along with the anti-TB drugs is a very attractive strategy to make the treatment more effective as phytochemicals have no side-effects, are much less toxic than synthetic anti-TB drugs, are safe to use and most importantly, do not produce resistant strains as opposed to synthetic anti-TB drugs. Approximately 420,000 plant species have been identified globally and among them only a few have been explored for their therapeutic potential. Traditional medicine in different parts of the world has employed crud
... Show MoreTrickle irrigation is one of the most conservative irrigation techniques since it implies supplying water directly on the soil through emitters. Emitters dissipate energy of water at the end of the trickle irrigation system and provide water at emission points. The area wetted by an emitter depends upon the discharge of emitter, soil texture, initial soil water content, and soil permeability. The objectives of this research were to predict water distribution profiles through different soils for different conditions and quantify the distribution profiles in terms of main characteristics of soil and emitter. The wetting patterns were simulated at the end of each hour for a total time of application of 12 hrs, emitter disch
... Show MoreDeveloping an efficient algorithm for automated Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) segmentation to characterize tumor abnormalities in an accurate and reproducible manner is ever demanding. This paper presents an overview of the recent development and challenges of the energy minimizing active contour segmentation model called snake for the MRI. This model is successfully used in contour detection for object recognition, computer vision and graphics as well as biomedical image processing including X-ray, MRI and Ultrasound images. Snakes being deformable well-defined curves in the image domain can move under the influence of internal forces and external forces are subsequently derived from the image data. We underscore a critical appraisal
... Show MoreLong memory analysis is one of the most active areas in econometrics and time series where various methods have been introduced to identify and estimate the long memory parameter in partially integrated time series. One of the most common models used to represent time series that have a long memory is the ARFIMA (Auto Regressive Fractional Integration Moving Average Model) which diffs are a fractional number called the fractional parameter. To analyze and determine the ARFIMA model, the fractal parameter must be estimated. There are many methods for fractional parameter estimation. In this research, the estimation methods were divided into indirect methods, where the Hurst parameter is estimated fir
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