This article mainly introduces the new development of signal processing techniques used in analyzing electrophysiological signals of atrial fibrillation. Discussions and suggestions are given differently in the view of start, methods and values of clinical applications. The introduction is hoped to give some guidance to the domestic research in the correspondent fields.

Purpose: To realize the detection of T-wave end with an efficient and accurate method. Methods: R-wave was lo-cated using wavelet transforming, and then the T-wave detection interval was identified accttrately by avoiding the influence of heart rate and P-wave. In addition, T-wave peaks were determined referring to the modulus maxima in the interval. Based on these, the T-wave end was located with a simple and practical geometrical method, which was applied for the evaluation of QT database. Results: The positioning capability of the above-mentioned method reached to (-0.35225±18.5869) ms which was comparable or even better than those manual annotations from QT database by cardiologists. Conclusions: The experimental results showed that our algorithm for T-wave end detection is robust to noise, baseline drift and waveform morphological varia-tions, and easy to calculate and to realize.

Objective To explore the regularity of hematopoietic materials during the clonal evolution of aplastic anemia(AA), paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) , myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and acute leukemia(AL). Methods Patients diagnosed as AA, PNH, MDS and AL were recruited as cases and health volunteers were recruited as controls. Serum folic acid, vitamin B12 and ferritin levels were measured by radioimmunoassay and competitive enzyme immunoassay,before and after-treatment. Results Before treatment,the level of serum folic acid in PNH group were significantly lower than that in the control group(P<0. 05). Vitamin B12 and ferritin levels of MDS patients were higher than the control group (P < 0. 05); Serum Folic acid level in AL patients was significantly lower than the control group (P < 0. 05). In contrast, vitamin B12 and ferritin levels were higher than the control group(P <0. 05). Compared to pre-treatments AA patients, vitamin B12 and ferritin levels of MDS patients were significantly higher(P <0. 01) ;Serum folic acid level in AL patients was significantly lower(P < 0.05). However,vitamin B12 and ferritin levels were higher. Compared to pre-treatments MDS patients, serum folic acid level in AL patients was significantly lower(P < 0. 05) , whereas vitamin B12 and ferritin levels were higher(P < 0. 05). The comparison of hematopoietic materials between pre-and post-treatments among the groups showed that there was no significant difference for AA patients between pre- and post-treatments in the levels of serum folic acid and vitamin Bl2 (P > 0. 05), whereas ferritin was significantly higher after treatment caused by transfusion in AA patients(P<0. 05) ;ln PNH patients,serum folic acid was significantly higher after treatment(P<0. 05) ,and there was no significant difference in the levels of vitamin B12 and ferritin between pre-and post-treatments (P >0. 05). In MDS patients, there was no significant difference in the level of ferum folic acid between pre-and post-treatments (P > 0. 05) , whereas vitamin B12 and ferritin levels were significantly lower after treatment (P < 0. 05); In AL patients,serum folic acid was significantly higher after treatment(P <0. 05) .whereas the levels of vitamin B12 and ferritin were significantly lower after treatment (P <0. 05). Conclusions There are significant difference in serum folic acid,vitamin B12 and ferritin among the patitents of AA,PNH,MDS and AL and would be helpful in discovering the interrelationship among the four diseases pertinent to the clonal evolution,prognosis,treatment and prognosis.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the occurring mechanism and clinical characteristics of severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) associated with hypoalbuminemia in early stage and its influence on prognosis of SAP and the preventive and therapeutic management of this disease. METHODS: One hundred and thirty-eight cases diagnosed as SAP complicated by hypoalbuminemia in early stage were accepted in our hospital from August 1, 2003 to December 31, 2004, and they were divided into 2 groups according to the level of plasma albumin: mild hypoalbuminemia (30 to 35 g/L) group and severe hypoalbuminemia (<30 g/L) group. The complications in the early stage, related parameters, and the incidence rate of infection and mortality in the later stage were evaluated respectively. RESULTS: The incidence rates of renal dysfunction, shock, cardiovascular failure and gastrointestinal hemorrhage, the score of acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II (APACHE II ) and the frequencies of pulse and breath in the severe hypoalbuminemia group were all higher than those in the mild hypoalbuminemia group (P<0.05 or P<0.01). The differences of incidence rate of hepatic failure and the scores of Ranson and Balthazar CT between these two groups had no statistical significance (P>0.05). The incidence rate of infection and the mortality in the severe hypoalbuminemia group were higher than those in the mild hypoalbuminemia group (P<0.01) in the later stage of SAP. CONCLUSION: Hypoalbuminemia in the early stage can accelerate the deterioration in pathophysiology of SAP. The lower level of the plasma albumin is in the early stage, the more complications and the higher incidence rate of infection and mortality will be in the later stage. To relieve the extent of systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) and abundant supplement of albumin, amino acid and lipid in time may be crucial to prevent the occurrence and deterioration of hypoalbuminemia.

OBJECTIVE: To study the therapeutic effects of Chaiqin Chengqi Decoction (CQCQD) in treating severe acute biliary pancreatitis. METHODS: Ninety patients with severe acute biliary pancreatitis were treated with CQCQD, and they were divided into two groups: early-treated group (54 patients treated with CQCQD within 3 days after the onset of severe acute biliary pancreatitis) and late-treated group (36 patients treated with CQCQD between 3 and 7 days after the onset of severe acute biliary pancreatitis). The complication incidence rate, operation rate, mortality rate and hospitalization period were examined. RESULTS: The incidence rates of encephalopathy, infection and gastrointestinal hemorrhage were lower in the early-treated group than those in the late-treated group (P<0.05). The hospitalization periods of the early- and late-treated groups were (24.9+/-18.4) days and (51.6+/-45.9) days respectively (P<0.05). The general mortality rate was 14.4%. The mortality rate of the early-treated group (7.4%) was significantly lower as compared with that of the late-treated group (25.0%) (P<0.05). The operation rate of the early-treated group (11.1%) was also significantly lower as compared with that of the late-treated group (27.8%) (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: Treating severe acute biliary pancreatitis with CQCQD in early stage may reduce the complication incidence rate, shorten the hospitalization period, and decrease the operation rate and mortality rate.

AIM: To explore whether granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) has the function of curing ischemia cerebral infarction in rats. METHODS: Rat cerebral infarction model was stablished by line occlusion and G-CSF 60 ?g/kg was injected into abdominal cavity an hour later. The technique of TTC and HE staining and immunohistochemistry were used to detect the volume of infarction and pathological change and the infiltration of CD34 positive cells, respectively. RESULTS: The infarction volume of the rat brain was smaller in G-CSF-therapy group than infarction group 24 hours later and the pathological damage is slighter. Both CD34 positive mono-nucleus cells and CD34 positive neuron-like cells were detected in the rat brain of G-CSF-therapy group but not in the control one 24 hours later. CONCLUSIONS: G-CSF can relieve the ischemia degree and reduce the infarction volume. The possible mechanism is that G-CSF plays protection role on the ischemic neuron cells and moblizes stem cells in bone marrow, then stimulates the regeneration and plerosis of brain tissues.

With the non-invasive analysis of time-frequency features and instantaneous frequency (IFs) of atrial fibrillation (AF) from surface ECG signals, some important information reflecting the dynamic behavior of atria with AF can be extracted. In this paper is proposed a hybrid time-frequency analysis method, which uses the respective advantages of Gabor expansion and quadratic Wigner distribution. Our study showed that the time-frequency representation of atrial fibrillation signals was formulated into the combinations of time-frequency atoms series. By controlling the trade-off of resolution and interference terms via Manhattan distance threshold, this method in combination with moment-based computation obtained more robust estimation of IFs. The comparative analysis of 10 pairs of non-terminating and terminating types of AF signals suggested that hybrid estimation of IFs can detect the reduction of a majority of the fibrillatory rate when AF will end. Meanwhile, this method decreases compute burden and is a more robust way relative to peak-based or spectrogram method. So, the proposed method would have prospective applications in clinical management of atrial fibrillation.
Algorithms ; Atrial Fibrillation ; diagnosis ; physiopathology ; Electrocardiography ; methods ; Humans ; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted

UNLABELLEDObjective To explore the effects of sperm DNA integrity rate, acrosome integrity rate and acrosome reaction rate on the outcomes of rescue intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).

METHODSThis retrospective analysis was conducted among 97 infertile couples receiving rescue ICSI due to failure of in vitro fertilization procedures in our Reproductive Medicine Center. Of these 97 women, 41 had clinical pregnancy and 56 did not, and the effects of sperm DNA integrity rate (estimated by DNA fragmentation index, DFI), acrosome integrity rate and acrosome reaction rate on rescue ICSI outcomes were analyzed.

RESULTSNo significant difference was found in paternal age, testosterone value, testicular volume, FSH, female patient' age or the number of eggs retrieved between the two groups (P>0.05), but the infertility years was significantly shorter in the pregnancy group than in the non-pregnancy group (P<0.05). The fertilization rate and cleavage rate were similar between the two groups (P>0.05), but the good embryo rate was significantly higher in the pregnancy group (P<0.05). The sperm DNA integrity or acrosome reaction rate did not differ significantly between the two groups (P>0.05), but the acrosome integrity rate was significantly higher in the pregnancy group (P<0.05). The sperm DNA integrity rate, acrosome integrity or acrosome reaction rate were not correlated with the fertilization rate, cleavage rate or good embryo rate (P>0.05). The pregnancy rate, twin and single fetus rates were 42.3%, 10.3% and 32.0% in this cohort after recue ICSI, respectively.

CONCLUSIONRescue ICSI is an effective treatment after failed in vitro fertilization procedure, and sperm acrosome integrity rate is associated with the outcome of rescue ICSI.

Acrosome ; pathology ; Acrosome Reaction ; DNA Fragmentation ; Female ; Fertilization ; Fertilization in Vitro ; Humans ; Infertility ; Male ; Pregnancy ; Pregnancy Rate ; Retrospective Studies ; Sperm Injections, Intracytoplasmic

In recent years, with the continuous studies on tumor metabonomics, more and more results have shown that changes of metabolism play important roles in the occurrence and development of malignant tumor. Carcinogenic factors can destroy the metabolic balance of human body, induce metabolic reprogramming, and then mediate a variety of biological behaviors to partici-pate in the proliferation and invasion of cancer cells. Lipids provide the body with the necessary energy and essential fatty acids, and a variety of lipid molecules and metabolites are involved in cell signal transduction. Lipid metabolism is an important link in the metabolic system of the body, and the relationship between the occurrence and development of pancreatic cancer and lipid metabo-lism is not clear. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the changes of lipid metabolism in pancreatic cancer, summarize some preclinical studies and clinical trials, and deeply explain the research status of abnormal lipid metabolism associated with pancreatic cancer, so as to provide new ideas for the study of pancreatic cancer pathogenesis and accurate treatment.

OBJECTIVETo explore the impacts on physical and mental health of the patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) treated with electroacupuncture (EA) or Diane 35.

METHODSSeventy-two patients of PCOS were randomized into an acupuncture group and a western medication group, 36 cases in each group. In the acupuncture group, acupuncture was applied to relieving liver stagnation and regulatingactivity at Ganshu (BL 18), Danzhong (CV 17), Qimen (LR 14), Zhongwan (CV 4), Tianshu (ST 25), Guanyuan (CV 4), Zigong (EX-CA 1), Sanyinjiao (SP 6), Zusanli (ST 36) and Taichong (LR 3). Afterarrival, the electric stimulation was added for 30 min. Acupuncture treatment was given 3 times a week. In the western medication group, Diane 35 was taken since the 5th day of menstruation and lasted for 21 days. The cycle of treatment was 3 months in the two groups. Before treatment and at the end of treatment, the symptom scores were evaluated and the self-report symptom inventory, symptom checklist-90 (SCL-90) was used for the mental health evaluation and the comparison was made between the two groups.

RESULTSCompared with those before treatment in the same group, the symptom scores were reduced significantly after treatment in the two groups (both<0.01). After treatment, the symptom scores in the acupuncture group were reduced significantly as compared with those in the western medicationgroup (<0.01). After treatment, the scores of somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety and hostility were reduced significantly as compared with those before treatment in the acupuncture group (all<0.05). After treatment, the scores of somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility and phobic factor were lower significantly than those in the western medication group (all<0.05).

CONCLUSIONSEA with relieving liver stagnation and regulatingactivity reduces the symptom scores of PCOS and SCL-90 scores, acting on regulating both physical and mental conditions. The effects achieved with acupuncture are better than those with Diane 35.