INFORMATION:
Deep learning helps predicting occult peritoneal metastasis in stomach cancer
2021-01-07
(Press-News.org) Stomach cancer, or gastric cancer, is a common gastrointestinal malignancy. Peritoneal metastasis occurs in a majority of patients with advanced stomach cancer and is considered as an aggressive disease with poor outcomes.
Patients with peritoneal metastasis are typically not eligible for curative surgery. Therefore, preoperative detection and diagnosis of peritoneal metastasis are critical to inform treatment decision-making and avoid unnecessary surgery.
A new study published in the JAMA Network Open on Jan. 5 shows that deep learning can help predicting the occult peritoneal metastasis in stomach cancer. It provides a novel and noninvasive approach for stomach cancer patients and may inform individualized surgical management of stomach cancer.
The study was conducted by Dr. XIE Yaoqin's group from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr. LI Ruijiang from Stanford University, Dr. LI Guoxin from Nanfang Hospital, and Dr. ZHOU Zhiwei from Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center.
The researchers developed a deep learning model called Peritoneal Metastasis Network (PMetNet) to predict clinically occult peritoneal metastasis using preoperative computed tomography (CT) images in patients with stomach cancer.
Dr. JIANG Yuming from Stanford University, one co-first author of this study, explained that the proposed deep learning model may serve as a reliable noninvasive tool for the early identification of patients with clinically occult peritoneal metastasis.
"It can also inform individualized preoperative treatment decision-making and may avoid unnecessary surgery and complications," said Ph.D. candidate LIANG Xiaokun from SIAT, the other co-first author.
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Oldest hominins of Olduvai Gorge persisted across changing environments
2021-01-07
Olduvai (now Oldupai) Gorge, known as the Cradle of Humankind, is a UNESCO World Heritage site in Tanzania, made famous by Louis and Mary Leakey. New interdisciplinary field work has led to the discovery of the oldest archaeological site in Oldupai Gorge as reported in Nature Communications, which shows that early human used a wide diversity of habitats amidst environmental changes across a 200,000 year-long period.
Located in the heart of eastern Africa, the Rift System is a prime region for human origins research, boasting extraordinary records of extinct human species and environmental records spanning several million years. For more than a century, archaeologists and human palaeontologists have been exploring the East African Rift outcrops and unearthing hominin fossils in surveys ...
Research explains why crocodiles have changed so little since the age of the dinosaurs
2021-01-07
New research by scientists at the University of Bristol explains how a 'stop-start' pattern of evolution, governed by environmental change, could explain why crocodiles have changed so little since the age of the dinosaurs.
Crocodiles today look very similar to ones from the Jurassic period some 200 million years ago. There are also very few species alive today - just 25. Other animals such as lizards and birds have achieved a diversity of many thousands of species in the same amount of time or less.
Prehistory also saw types of crocodile we don't see today, including giants as big as dinosaurs, plant-eaters, fast ...
Birmingham research paves the way for new anti-fibrotic therapy for glaucoma
2021-01-07
Scientists at the University of Birmingham, UK, have shown that a novel low molecular weight dextran-sulphate, ILB® could play a key role in treating open angle glaucoma (OAG), a neurodegenerative disease that affects over 70 million people worldwide and causes irreversible blindness.
OAG develops slowly over many years. Excessive matrix deposition (fibrosis) within the eye's main fluid drainage site can lead to increased intraocular pressure (IOP), resulting in damage to the optic nerve.1
The research, reported in npj Regenerative Medicine, has ...
Harbor porpoises on the decline in the German North Sea
2021-01-07
The North Sea is a heavily trafficked area, with major shipping routes crossing its waters, and fisheries, offshore oil rigs, and wind farms populating its waves. All this activity inevitably has an effect on marine wildlife, and scientists are particularly interested in how the harbor porpoise population has fared in the face of such disturbances.
The harbor porpoise is known as a "sentinel species" - animals which indicate the health of an ecosystem and point to potential risks (think of the canary in the coal mine). According to a recent study published in Frontiers ...
Human migration patterns connected to vitamin D deficiencies today
2021-01-07
A new study in the Oxford Economic Papers finds that migration flows the last 500 years from high sunlight regions to low sunlight regions influence contemporary health outcomes in destination countries.
The researchers here noted that people's ability to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight declines with skin pigmentation, and that vitamin D deficiency is directly associated with higher risk of mortality, from illnesses including cardiovascular disease, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and certain cancers. Recent research even .finds that vitamin D affects the severity of COVID-19.
Researchers here focused on ...
COVID-19 infection linked with higher death rate in acute heart failure patients
2021-01-07
Sophia Antipolis, 7 January 2021: Patients with acute heart failure nearly double their risk of dying if they get COVID-19, according to research published today in ESC Heart Failure, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 The small, single centre study highlights the need for patients with heart failure to take extra precautions to avoid catching COVID-19.
"Our results support prioritising heart failure patients for COVID-19 vaccination once it is available," said study lead investigator Dr. Amardeep Dastidar, a consultant interventional cardiologist at North Bristol NHS Trust and Bristol Heart Institute, UK. "In the meantime, heart failure patients of all ages should ...
The Lancet Planetary Health: Meeting India's air quality targets across south Asia may prevent 7% of pregnancy losses, modelling study estimates
2021-01-07
Modelling study suggests that pregnant women in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, who are exposed to poor air quality, may be at higher risk of stillbirths and miscarriages.
An estimated 349,681 pregnancy losses per year in south Asia were associated with exposure to PM2.5 concentrations that exceeded India's air quality standard (more than 40 μg/m³), accounting for 7% of annual pregnancy loss in the region from 2000-2016.
First study to estimate the effect of air pollution on pregnancy loss across the region indicates that air pollution could be a major contributor to pregnancy loss in south Asia, so controlling air pollution is vital for improving maternal ...
An epidemic of overdiagnosis: Melanoma diagnoses sky rocket
2021-01-07
WHO H. Gilbert Welch MD, MPH, Senior Investigator, Center for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital; co-author of a new Sounding Board article published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
WHAT Melanoma of the skin is now the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in the U.S. Diagnoses of melanoma are six times as high today as they were 40 years ago. While incidence of melanoma has been rising steeply, melanoma mortality has been generally stable. In a Sounding Board article, Welch and colleagues present evidence for why they believe that increased diagnostic scrutiny is the primary driver of the rapid rise in melanoma diagnoses.
"Melanoma is now the posterchild for overdiagnosis," said Welch. "Although the conventional response has been ...
A third of US families face a different kind of poverty
2021-01-06
DURHAM, N.C. -- Before the pandemic, one-third of U.S. households with children were already "net worth poor," lacking enough financial resources to sustain their families for three months at a poverty level, finds new research from Duke University.
In 2019, 57 percent of Black families and 50 percent of Latino families with children were poor in terms of net worth. By comparison, the rate for white families was 24 percent.
"These 'net worth poor' households have no assets to withstand a sudden economic loss, like we have seen with COVID-19," said Christina Gibson-Davis, co-author of the study and professor of public policy and sociology at Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy. "Their savings are virtually nil, ...
Light-based processors boost machine-learning processing
2021-01-06
The exponential growth of data traffic in our digital age poses some real challenges on processing power. And with the advent of machine learning and AI in, for example, self-driving vehicles and speech recognition, the upward trend is set to continue. All this places a heavy burden on the ability of current computer processors to keep up with demand.
Now, an international team of scientists has turned to light to tackle the problem. The researchers developed a new approach and architecture that combines processing and data storage onto a single chip by using light-based, or "photonic" processors, which ...