Objectives: Small field of view gamma detection and imaging technologies for monitoring in vivo tracer uptake are rapidly expanding and being introduced for bed-side imaging and image guided surgical procedures. The Hybrid Gamma Camera (HGC) has been developed to enhance the localization of targeted radiopharmaceuticals during surgical procedures; for example in sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsies and for bed-side imaging in procedures such as lacrimal drainage imaging and thyroid scanning. In this study, a prototype anthropomorphic head and neck phantom has been designed, constructed, and evaluated using representative modelled medical scenarios to study the capability of the HGC to detect SLNs and image small organs. Methods: An anthropomorphic head and neck phantom has been designed to mimic the adult head and neck including some internal organs and tissues of interest, such as the thyroid gland and sentinel lymph nodes. The design of the head and neck phantom included an adjustable inner jig holding the simulated SLNs and thyroid gland. The simulated thyroid gland was designed and 3D printed taking into consideration the size and the shape of a healthy adult thyroid gland. The inner sealed space of the thyroid was filled with 15MBq of 99mTc through two upper filling valves. Sealed micro-tubes (0.2ml) have been employed to simulate SLNs containing various 99mTc activity concentrations ranging between 0.1MBq and 1MBq, and can be positioned at any desired place in the head and neck region. An active background was simulated through mixing 10MBq of 99mTc solution with the water used to fill the outer shell of the head and neck phantom. Results: The head and neck phantom was employed to simulate a situation where there are four SLNs distributed at two different vertical levels and at two depths within the neck. Contrast to noise ratio (CNR) calculations were performed for the detected SLNs at an 80mm distance between both pinhole collimators (i.e. 0.5mm and 1.0mm diameters) and the surface of the head and neck phantom with a 100s acquisition time. The recorded CNR values for the simulated SLNs are higher when the HGC was fitted with the 1.0mm diameter pinhole collimator. For instance, the recorded CNR values for the superficially simulated SLN containing 0.1MBq of 99mTc using 0.5mm and 1.0mm diameter pinhole collimators are 6.48 and 16.42, respectively (~87% difference). The anatomical context provided by the hybrid imaging aided the localization process of radioactivity accumulation in simulated SLNs. Gamma and hybrid optical images were acquired using the HGC with both available pinhole collimators for the simulated thyroid gland. The thyroid images produced varied in terms of spatial resolution and detectability. The count profiles through the middle of the simulated thyroid gland images provided by both pinhole collimators were obtained. The HGC could clearly differentiate the individual peaks of both thyroid lobes in the gamma image produced by the 0.5mm pinhole collimator. In contrast, the recorded count profile for the acquired image using the 1.0mm diameter pinhole collimator showed broader peaks for both lobes, reflecting the degradation of the spatial resolution with increasing the diameter of the pinhole collimator. Conclusion: The capability of the HGC has been evaluated utilizing a prototype anthropomorphic head and neck phantom, and the gamma and hybrid images obtained demonstrate that it is ideally suited for intraoperative SLNs detection and small organ imaging. The standardization of test phantoms and protocols for SFOV portable gamma systems will provide an opportunity to collect data across various medical centers and research groups. Moreover, it will provide a technical baseline for researchers and clinical practitioners to consider when assessing their SFOV gamma imaging systems. The anthropomorphic head and neck phantom described is cost effective, reproducible, flexible and anatomically representative.
The aim of study is to shed light on an Islamic city which is unknown for a lot of people, it can have an old history in Parisian country and many events happen with it , This city is characterized with political, military, economic scientific ,and social features, This city is called Zanjan and it is one of the most important cities because it dates back to the period of post history and it has a good geographic location whereas it was, passage for trade caravans to pass through as well its land which was specialized in agriculture and industry. the study follows chronological order of historical events for the city, one of the most significant conclusions is to think that this city does belong to artifacts and it is an old city and it
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The increasing requirement and use of dental implant treatments has rendered dental implantology indispensable in dentistry. The aim of this study is to determine the optimum concentration of calcium silicate to be incorporated into a polyetherketoneketone (PEKK) matrix used as an implant material to enhance the bioactivity and mechanical properties of the composite compared with unmodified PEKK. In this study, different weight percentage (wt%) of micro-calcium silicate (m-CS) is incorporated into PEKK with ethanol as a binder. Subsequently, the mixture is dried in a forced convection oven at 120°C and poured into customized molds to fabricate a bioactive composite via compression molding (310°C, 15 MPa, and 20 min holding time
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The emergence of COVID-19 has resulted in an unprecedented escalation in different aspects of human activities, including medical education. Students and educators across academic institutions have confronted various challenges in following the guidelines of protection against the disease on one hand and accomplishing learning curricula on the other hand. In this short view, we presented our experience in implementing e-learning to the undergraduate nursing students during the present COVID-19 pandemic emphasizing the learning content, barriers, and feedback of students and educators. We hope that this view will trigger the preparedness of nursing faculties in Iraq to deal with this new modality of learning and improve it should t
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The research aims to presenting a number of scenarios for the investment of the marshes. The problem of research problem was that there is no in-depth analysis of the marshes environment. The traditional methods of the environmental analysis are insufficient. The research community is represented by the decision makers in Maysan Governorate. The research led to proposing of three scenarios with statement the requirements for the success of each one. The most important conclusions are that the three proposed scenarios for marshes investment depend on the availability of the required volunteers for each scenario. The higher the availability of the requirements, the more optimistic the scenario becomes. If t
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In a world of fierce competition companies of different activities strive to strengthen their competitiveness in order to be able to deliver greater value to their customers and gain a distinct sites in competition with other companies in the market at the local and international levels. Every company seeks to focus on one or more of the competitive capabilities in order to turn it into an obvious advantage or a number of competitive advantages to contribute in improving the performance and superiority over its competitors. Therefore, the management of companies no longer need only useful information for the internal aspects of the environment, but also need to include the external environment that includes various and constantly changin
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This study aims to recognize the most common thinking styles and level of the need for cognitive university students , the relation between thinking styles and the need for cognitive, and there are differences according to gender .The sample consists of (250) males and females university students for the academic year (2013-2014), and the researcher uses two scales;" thinking styles scale (Harison &Bramson, 1986), and the need for cognitive scale" (Cacioppo, Petty & Kao , 1996).
The results show that there is difference in the range of the prevalence of the thinking styles among university students , the scientific thinking style is the most common , the students have got the arrange level of the need for cognitive , and there
This paper presents a fuzzy logic controller for a two-tank level control system, which is a process with a dead time. The fuzzy controller is a proportional-integral (PI-like) fuzzy controller which is suitable for steady state behavior of the system. Transient behavior of the system was improved without the need for a derivative action by suitable change in the rule base of the controller. Simulation results showed the step response of the two-tank level control system when this controller was used to control this plant and the effect of the dead time on the response of the system.
Corpus linguistics is a methodology in studying language through corpus-based research. It differs from a traditional approach in studying a language (prescriptive approach) in its insistence on the systematic study of authentic examples of language in use (descriptive approach).A “corpus” is a large body of machine-readable structurally collected naturally occurring linguistic data, either written texts or a transcription of recorded speech, which can be used as a starting-point of linguistic description or as a means of verifying hypotheses about a language. In the past decade, interest has grown tremendously in the use of language corpora for language education. The ways in which corpora have been employed in language pedago
... Show MoreRecently, all over the world mechanism of cloud computing is widely acceptable and used by most of the enterprise businesses in order increase their productivity. However there are still some concerns about the security provided by the cloud environment are raises. Thus in this our research project, we are discussing over the cloud computing paradigm evolvement for the large business applications like CRM as well as introducing the new framework for the secure cloud computing using the method of IT auditing. In this case our approach is basically directed towards the establishment of the cloud computing framework for the CRM applications with the use of checklists by following the data flow of the CRM application and its lifecycle. Those ch
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