Enhancing Prostate Cancer Diagnosis with Deep Learning: A Study using mpMRI Segmentation and Classification

Prostate cancer (PCa) is a severe disease among men globally. It is important to identify PCa early and make a precise diagnosis for effective treatment. For PCa diagnosis, Multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) emerged as an invaluable imaging modality that offers a precise anatomical view of the prostate gland and its tissue structure. Deep learning (DL) models can enhance existing clinical systems and improve patient care by locating regions of interest for physicians. Recently, DL techniques have been employed to develop a pipeline for segmenting and classifying different cancer types. These studies show that DL can be used to increase diagnostic precision and give objective results without variability. This work uses well-known DL models for the classification and segmentation of mpMRI images to detect PCa. Our implementation involves four pipelines; Semantic DeepSegNet with ResNet50, DeepSegNet with recurrent neural network (RNN), U-Net with RNN, and U-Net with a long short-term memory (LSTM). Each segmentation model is paired with a different classifier to evaluate the performance using different metrics. The results of our experiments show that the pipeline that uses the combination of U-Net and the LSTM model outperforms all other combinations, excelling in both segmentation and classification tasks.Comment: Accepted at CISCON-202

Revolutionizing Prostate Whole-Slide Image Super-Resolution: A Comparative Journey from Regression to Generative Adversarial Networks

Microscopic and digital whole-slide images (WSIs) often suffer from limited spatial resolution, hindering accurate pathological analysis and cancer diagnosis. Improving the spatial resolution of these pathology images is crucial, as it can enhance the visualization of fine cellular and tissue structures, leading to more reliable and precise cancer detection and diagnosis. This paper presents a comprehensive comparative study on super-resolution (SR) reconstruction techniques for prostate WSI, exploring a range of machine learning, deep learning, and generative adversarial network (GAN) algorithms. The algorithms investigated include regression, sparse learning, principal component analysis, bicubic interpolation, multi-support vector neural networks, an SR convolutional neural network, and an autoencoder, along with advanced SRGAN-based methods. The performance of these algorithms was meticulously evaluated using a suite of metrics, such as the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index mepublishedVersio

Pandemic, Hybrid Teaching & Stress: Examining Indian Teachers' Sociotechnical Support Practices in Low-income Schools

Support plays a vital role in the teaching profession. A good support system can empower teachers to regulate their emotions and effectively manage stress while working in isolation. The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a hybrid form of education, necessitating the acquisition of new skills by teachers and compelling them to adapt to remote teaching. This new development further amplifies the sense of isolation prevalent amongst the teaching community. Against this backdrop, our study investigates the availability of sociotechnical support infrastructures for teachers in low-income schools while also looking into the support practices embraced by this class of teachers following the pandemic. Through 28 qualitative interviews involving teachers, management and personnel from support organizations, we demonstrate how teachers have largely taken the initiative to establish their own informal support networks in the absence of formal support infrastructures. Smartphones have significantly augmented these support practices, serving as both a valuable source of support as well as a medium for facilitating support practices. However, in comparison to other forms of support received from these sources, the availability of emotion-focused support for teachers have proven to be inadequate, creating imbalances in their support seeking practices. Our paper provides different contextual ways to reduce these imbalances and improve the occupational well-being of teachers

Ocean Surface Trash Collector

This paper describes the design of a robot for collecting waste floating on the water surface. Three important issues for designing the aquatic robots are a cost-effective solution along with robustness and durability. Due to the nature of the cleaning work, we designed the robot structure with car like mechanism that can provide high stability, good ability in maneuver and can easily collect all the waste flowing on the water. The plastic pipe container works best for this case and fulfils all structural stability criteria. For collection of waste, a motor-driven conveyor belt has been designed for collecting the wastes and deploy it into a plastic box connected to the platform. This design provides simple and effective waste removal and accommodates large amounts of waste within a little space. This light-weight and tough structure support the total weight of the collected waste, conveyor as well as the hardware components used. The rotating arms system based a differential drive mechanism has been designed, which allows the robots to require a 360 turn on the spot and provides high thrust. Electronic circuit and motors have been placed on the platform, in order to protect them from water. The robot is automatically controlled by Arduino, sensors, motor driver, GPS and GSM modules. The testing of the robot prototype proved to be effective in waste collecting and getting back to the way-point. The maximum trash loads that robot can bear is up 5 kg. The main aim of the project is to optimize time, energy and overall process speed

Comparison of Conventional Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy and Endoscopic Combined Intrarenal Surgery with Respect to Efficacy and Safety in Complex Renal Stone

When PCNL and RIRS alone are unable to completely clear complex renal calculi, a combination of the two modalities was tested. Endoscopically Combined Intra Renal Surgery (ECIRS) is name given to this procedure afterwards. It excludes the drawbacks of multi-puncture PCNL and simultaneously provides much higher stone free rates. ECIRS is a relatively new tool in the arsenal of urologists, and as of right now, there isn't much information available in developing nations. Methods: A Comparative Observational study where 40 patients were split into two groups of 20, one for ECIRS and the other for prone PCNL. Both groups' surgical times, stone removal rates, potential complications, and other post-operative results were compared. Results: The majority of the patients (26) were men between the ages of 36 and 45, and both the group's age and gender were similar. The average calculus size was 2.43 cm for the ECIRS group and 2.60 cm for the prone PCNL group. Mean duration of the surgery was 85.24 & 88.12 min in ECIRS and prone PCNL group respectively. In the ECIRS group, the stone-free rate was considerably greater with lesser requirement of additional punctures and blood transfusions. More ancillary procedures prone PCNL patients' hospital stays were observed, as well. Post-operative S. urea and S. creatinine, fever, pain, post-operative complications were comparable. Conclusion: In view of the findings of the study, ECIRS seems to be a better option in comparison to prone PCNL in terms of effectiveness and safety. &nbsp

Corticosterone enhances formation of non-fear but not fear memory during infectious illness

IntroductionSurvivors of critical illness are at high risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but administration of glucocorticoids during the illness can lower that risk. The mechanism is not known but may involve glucocorticoid modulation of hippocampal- and amygdala-dependent memory formation. In this study, we sought to determine whether glucocorticoids given during an acute illness influence the formation and persistence of fear and non-fear memories from the time of the illness.MethodsWe performed cecal ligation and puncture in male and female mice to induce an acute infectious illness. During the illness, mice were introduced to a neutral object in their home cage and separately underwent contextual fear conditioning. We then tested the persistence of object and fear memories after recovery.ResultsGlucocorticoid treatment enhanced object discrimination but did not alter the expression of contextual fear memory. During context re-exposure, neural activity was elevated in the dentate gyrus irrespective of fear conditioning.ConclusionsOur results suggest that glucocorticoids given during illness enhance hippocampal-dependent non-fear memory processes. This indicates that PTSD outcomes in critically ill patients may be improved by enhancing non-fear memories from the time of their illness

Inheritance of some morphological characters in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

The present investigation was undertaken to generate information on the inheritance of flower colour, leaflet size and pigmented stem in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). Parents, F1’s, and F2’s of crosses Vijay x PKV-4, Digvijay x PKV-4 and BDNG-797 x PKV-4 were evaluated during rabi, 2018-19. The monogenic inheritance was confirmed for two traits, pink vs. white flower colour and pigmented vs. non pigmented stem pigmentation. Leaflet size, small vs. broad was controlled by duplicate gene action. The genetic inheritance of these morphological traits is essential for the selection of superior and desirable transgressive segregants for the genetic improvement of the crop. These results are of essential significance because these traits are used as visual markers in chickpea breeding for early recognition of the hybrid nature of plants

Evaluation of Critical Quality Attributes of a Pentavalent (A, C, Y, W, X) Meningococcal Conjugate Vaccine for Global Use

Towards achieving the goal of eliminating epidemic outbreaks of meningococcal disease in the African meningitis belt, a pentavalent glycoconjugate vaccine (NmCV-5) has been developed to protect against Neisseria meningitidis serogroups A, C, Y, W and X. MenA and X polysaccharides are conjugated to tetanus toxoid (TT) while MenC, Y and W polysaccharides are conjugated to recombinant cross reactive material 197 (rCRM197), a non-toxic genetic variant of diphtheria toxin. This study describes quality control testing performed by the manufacturer, Serum Institute of India Private Limited (SIIPL), and the independent control laboratory of the U.K. (NIBSC) on seven clinical lots of the vaccine to ensure its potency, purity, safety and consistency of its manufacturing. In addition to monitoring upstream-manufactured components, samples of drug substance, final drug product and stability samples were evaluated. This paper focuses on the comparison of the vaccine’s critical quality attributes and reviews key indicators of its stability and immunogenicity. Comparable results were obtained by the two laboratories demonstrating sufficient levels of polysaccharide O-acetylation, consistency in size of the bulk conjugate molecules, integrity of the conjugated saccharides in the drug substance and drug product, and acceptable endotoxin content in the final drug product. The freeze-dried vaccine in 5-dose vials was stable based on molecular sizing and free saccharide assays. Lot-to-lot manufacturing consistency was also demonstrated in preclinical studies for polysaccharide-specific IgG and complement-dependent serum bactericidal activity for each serogroup. This study demonstrates the high quality and stability of NmCV-5, which is now undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials in Africa and India