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.
Amorphization of drug has been considered as an attractive approach in improving drug solubility and bioavailability. Unlike their crystalline counterparts, amorphous materials lack the long-range order of molecular packing and present the highest energy state of a solid material. Co-amorphous systems (CAM) are an innovative formulation technique by where the amorphous drugs are stabilized via powerful intermolecular interactions by means of a low molecular co-former.
This review highlights the different approaches in the preparation of co-amorphous drug delivery system, the proper selection of the co-formers. In addition, the recent advances in characterization, Industrial scale and formulation will be discussed.
In the pandemic era of COVID19, software engineering and artificial intelligence tools played a major role in monitoring, managing, and predicting the spread of the virus. According to reports released by the World Health Organization, all attempts to prevent any form of infection are highly recommended among people. One side of avoiding infection is requiring people to wear face masks. The problem is that some people do not incline to wear a face mask, and guiding them manually by police is not easy especially in a large or public area to avoid this infection. The purpose of this paper is to construct a software tool called Face Mask Detection (FMD) to detect any face that does not wear a mask in a specific
... Show MoreMeasurement of construction performance is essential to a clear image of the present situation. This monitoring by the management team is necessary to identify locations where performance is exceptionally excellent or poor and to identify the primary reasons so that the lessons gained may be exported to the firm and its progress strengthened. This research attempts to construct an integrated mathematical model utilizing one of the recent methodologies for dealing with the fuzzy representation of experts’ knowledge and judgment considering hesitancy called spherical fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (SFAHP) method to assess the contractor’s performance per the project performance pa
Waste is one of the most important problems affecting the city’s environment and its urban landscape, which results from the activities and activities of man and the natural environment. Its sources have varied between residential, commercial, industrial, medical and hazardous, and its spread in cities, on roads and on abandoned open lands, has led to significant negative effects and risks to human health and the environment.
Therefore, there were serious attempts to deal with waste and follow sequential steps that formed a waste management system such as (collection, sorting, transport, then treatment and disposal). Preventing and reducing waste, then recycling and recovering by composting or burning, and ending with bu
... Show MoreThe Internet of Things (IoT) technology is every object around us and it is used to connect these objects to the Internet to verify Machine to Machine (M2M) communication. The smart house system is the most important application of IoT technology; it is increase the quality of life and decrease the efforts. There were many problems that faced the existing smart house networking systems, including the high cost of implementation and upgrading, high power consumption, and supported limited features. Therefore, this paper presents the design and implementation of smart house network system (SHNS) using Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms as network infrastructure with ZigBee technology as wireless communication. SHNS consists of two mai
... Show MoreIn present days, drug resistance is a major emerging problem in the healthcare sector. Novel antibiotics are in considerable need because present effective treatments have repeatedly failed. Antimicrobial peptides are the biologically active secondary metabolites produced by a variety of microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and algae, which possess surface activity reduction activity along with this they are having antimicrobial, antifungal, and antioxidant antibiofilm activity. Antimicrobial peptides include a wide variety of bioactive compounds such as Bacteriocins, glycolipids, lipopeptides, polysaccharide-protein complexes, phospholipids, fatty acids, and neutral lipids. Bioactive peptides derived from various natural sources like bacte
... Show MoreCephalexin and its derivatives are commonly utilized in the pharmaceutical and medicinal industry due to their biological and pharmaceutical activities, including anti-microbial, anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, and herbicidal activities as well as possessing high palatability and being useful for skin and joint infections. Interestingly, some organic drugs, including cephalexin, which exhibit toxicological and pharmacological properties, can be administered in forms of metal complexes. Many researchers have synthesized organic ligands derived from cephalexin in forms of Schiff bases and azo compounds which exhibited higher biological and medicinal properties when compared to cephalexin alone. One of the important features that make Schiff base
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