Objective To investigate the value of early?phase enhancement ratio combined with peripheral vascular diameter in the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant breast lesions using 3.0 T dynamic contrast?enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE?MRI). Methods Sixty seven cases of patients (35 with malignant lesions and 32 with benign lesions in the breasts) were retrospectively analyzed. Their diagnoses were confirmed by surgery and pathology and all the patients underwent breast MRI plain scan and DCE?MRI in the two weeks before surgery. Lesion ROIs were drawn and time?signal intensity curves in the DCE?MRI were generated. Early?phase enhancement rate, time to peak, early?phase enhancement ratio, numbers of tumor vessel within 3 cm of the lesion and diameter of the largest vessel were recorded. Mann?Whitney U test was used to compare the difference of DCE?MRI between benign and malignant lesions, and the ROC curve was used to evaluate the efficiency of early?phase enhancement rate, early?phase enhancement ratio and vascular diameter in differentiating benign and malignant lesions. Results With breast malignant lesions, the medians of time to peak, early?phase enhancement rate, early?phase enhancement ratio, numbers of tumor vessel and vascular diameter were 2.2 s, 176.0%, 100.0%, 4 and 2.96 mm respectively, while with benign lesions of these parameters were 4.7 s, 113.3%, 81.9%, 0 and 0.00 mm respectively, and the differences were statistically significant (all P<0.05).When early?phase enhancement rate was used for differential diagnosis of breast benign and malignant lesions, the area under the ROC curve was 0.702 and the sensitivity and specificity were 82.86%and 56.25%with a threshold of 120.0%. When early?phase enhancement ratio was used, the area under the ROC curve was 0.854 and the sensitivity and specificity were 94.29% and 68.75% with a threshold of 86.0%. When peripheral vascular diameter was used, the area under the ROC curve was 0.896 and the sensitivity and specificity were 74.29%and 84.38% with a threshold of 2.78 mm. When early?phase enhancement ratio was combined with peripheral vascular diameter, the area was 0.925 and the sensitivity and specificity were 97.14% and 62.50%. Conclusion In the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant breast lesions under DCE?MRI, early?phase enhancement ratio combining with peripheral vascular diameter has improved sensitivity.

To induce Crohn disease in rats by intraluminal instillations of different concentrations of 2,4,6-trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid (TNBS) and ethanol.

Heart sound is a physiological parameter with individual characteristics generated by heart beat. To do the individual classification and recognition, in this paper, we present our study of using wavelet transform in the signal denoising, with the Mel-Frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCC) as the feature parameters, and propose a research of reducing the dimensionality through principal components analysis (PCA). We have done the preliminary study to test the feasibility of biometric identification method using heart sound. The results showed that under the selected experimental conditions, the system could reach a 90% recognition rate. This study can provide a reference for further research.
Algorithms ; Artificial Intelligence ; Heart Sounds ; physiology ; Humans ; Individuality ; Pattern Recognition, Physiological ; physiology ; Principal Component Analysis ; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted ; Wavelet Analysis

Objective:To explore the potential mechanism of chitinase-3-like protein 1 (CHI3L1) involved in skeletal muscle stem cell injury induced by sepsis.Methods:Six different concentrations of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) were used to stimulate mouse skeletal muscle satellite cells cultured in vitro. Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) were used to determine the optimal concentration. The overexpression and interference vectors of CHI3L1 were constructed to transfect skeletal muscle satellite cells, and the transfection efficiency was verified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and Western blotting. The cells were randomly divided into blank control group (cells without any intervention), model group (LPS-stimulated untransfected cells), overexpressing CHI3L1 group (LPS-stimulated cells transfected with CHI3L1 plasmid), overexpressing CHI3L1 control group [LPS-stimulated cells transfected with negative control (NC) plasmid], CHI3L1 interference group [LPS-stimulated cells transfected with CHI3L1 small interfering RNA (siRNA)], CHI3L1 interference control group (LPS-stimulated cells transfected with CHI3L1-siRNA NC). The levels of extracellular caspase-1 and interleukin-1β (IL-1β) were detected by ELISA. The protein expressions of intracellular IL-1β, signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), protein kinase B (Akt) and phosphorylated Akt (p-Akt) were detected by Western blotting. Results:According to the results of CCK-8 and ELISA, the best concentration of 5 mg/L LPS was selected for the subsequent experiment. The transfection was validated by PCR and Western blotting. Compared with the blank control group, the levels of extracellular IL-1β, caspase-1 and the protein expressions of intracellular Akt, p-Akt, and IL-1β were significantly increased in the model group [IL-1β (ng/L): 11.22±0.55 vs. 8.63±0.63, caspase-1 (pmol/L): 9.47±0.22 vs. 8.65±0.15, Akt/GAPDH: 1.36±0.12 vs. 1.06±0.15, p-Akt/GAPDH: 0.78±0.07 vs. 0.09±0.01, IL-1β/GAPDH: 1.38±0.12 vs. 0.18±0.03, all P < 0.05]. Compared with the model group and the overexpressing CHI3L1 control group, the levels of extracellular IL-1β, caspase-1 and the protein expressions of intracellular p-Akt and IL-1β were significantly increased in the overexpressing CHI3L1 group [IL-1β(ng/L): 14.93±0.97 vs. 11.22±0.55, 9.38±0.40, caspase-1 (pmol/L): 10.35±0.03 vs. 9.47±0.22, 8.46±0.24, p-Akt/GAPDH: 1.21±0.04 vs. 0.78±0.07, 0.63±0.04, IL-1β/GAPDH: 1.87±0.08 vs. 1.38±0.12, 1.51±0.17, all P < 0.05]. Compared with the model group and the CHI3L1 interference control group, the levels of extracellular IL-1β, caspase-1 and the protein expressions of intracellular p-Akt and IL-1β were significantly decreased in the CHI3L1 interference group [IL-1β(ng/L): 8.98±0.73 vs. 11.22±0.55, 10.44±0.65, caspase-1 (pmol/L): 7.61±0.63 vs. 9.47±0.22, 8.37±0.38, p-Akt/GAPDH: 0.50±0.04 vs. 0.78±0.07, 0.94±0.06, IL-1β/GAPDH: 0.77±0.02 vs. 1.38±0.12, 1.13±0.07, all P < 0.05]. Conclusions:CHI3L1 may mediate the damage of skeletal muscle stem cells in sepsis by increasing the expression of caspase-1 and IL-1β. CHI3L1 may be involved in the regulation of Akt signaling pathway in skeletal muscle stem cells, but has no significant effect on STAT3 signaling pathway.