Metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD), previously called metabolic nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, is the most prevalent chronic liver disease worldwide. The multi-factorial ...nature of MAFLD severity is delineated through an intricate composite analysis of the grade of activity in concert with the stage of fibrosis. Despite the preeminence of liver biopsy as the diagnostic and staging reference standard, its invasive nature, pronounced interobserver variability, and potential for deleterious effects (encompassing pain, infection, and even fatality) underscore the need for viable alternatives. We reviewed computed tomography (CT)-based methods for hepatic steatosis quantification (liver-to-spleen ratio; single-energy “quantitative” CT; dual-energy CT; deep learning-based methods; photon-counting CT) and hepatic fibrosis staging (morphology-based CT methods; contrast-enhanced CT biomarkers; dedicated postprocessing methods including liver surface nodularity, liver segmental volume ratio, texture analysis, deep learning methods, and radiomics). For dual-energy and photon-counting CT, the role of virtual non-contrast images and material decomposition is illustrated. For contrast-enhanced CT, normalized iodine concentration and extracellular volume fraction are explained. The applicability and salience of these approaches for clinical diagnosis and quantification of MAFLD are discussed.
Relevance statement
CT offers a variety of methods for the assessment of metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease by quantifying steatosis and staging fibrosis.
Key points
• MAFLD is the most prevalent chronic liver disease worldwide and is rapidly increasing.
• Both hardware and software CT advances with high potential for MAFLD assessment have been observed in the last two decades.
• Effective estimate of liver steatosis and staging of liver fibrosis can be possible through CT.
Graphical Abstract
Hepatic tuberculosis (TB), which is secondary to post-hepatitis B cirrhosis, is extremely rare. We report the case of a 69-year-old man with post-hepatitis B cirrhosis complicated by primary isolated ...hepatic TB who was initially misdiagnosed as having hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The patient was hospitalized with complaints of 2 weeks of fever. He had a 20-year history of post-hepatitis B cirrhosis. The laboratory tests suggested that his serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) level was markedly elevated to 1210 ng/ml. From the abdominal ultrasound (US) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images, we confirmed the presence of cirrhosis and discovered a space-occupying lesion of the hepatic left lobe as well as portal vein-filling defects. These results led us to consider primary liver cancer and portal vein tumor thrombus combined with decompensated cirrhosis. Biopsy and histology may be considered the ultimate diagnostic tests, but we excluded needle biopsy because of his high risk of bleeding, in addition, the patient declined the procedure. To cope with his fever, the patient was given broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment initially, followed by intravenous vancomycin. After antibiotic treatment had failed, the patient was treated with anti-TB for 10 days; after that, the patient maintained a normal temperature. The patient continued to receive tuberculostatic therapy for 6 months following his discharge. AFP completely returned to the normal level, and the aforementioned mass disappeared. Finally, hepatic TB secondary to post-hepatitis B cirrhosis with portal vein thrombosis (PVT) was considered to be the final diagnosis. More than two imaging techniques discover a space-occupying liver lesion and that the serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) level is extremely elevated, which means that hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) could be diagnosed. However, some exceedingly rare diseases should not be excluded. This case illustrated that the non-invasive diagnostic criteria for liver cancer should be considered carefully when discovering a space-occupying liver lesion in a patient with cirrhosis and an elevated AFP level. In addition, primary hepatic TB should be considered and included in the differential diagnosis, and a biopsy should be performed promptly.
The liver is a multifaceted organ that is responsible for many critical functions encompassing amino acid, carbohydrate, and lipid metabolism, all of which make a healthy liver essential for the ...human body. Contemporary imaging methodologies have remarkable diagnostic accuracy in discerning focal liver lesions; however, a comprehensive understanding of diffuse liver diseases is a requisite for radiologists to accurately diagnose or predict the progression of such lesions within clinical contexts. Nonetheless, the conventional attributes of radiological features, including morphology, size, margin, density, signal intensity, and echoes, limit their clinical utility. Radiomics is a widely used approach that is characterized by the extraction of copious image features from radiographic depictions, which gives it considerable potential in addressing this limitation. It is worth noting that functional or molecular alterations occur significantly prior to the morphological shifts discernible by imaging modalities. Consequently, the explication of potential mechanisms by multiomics analyses (encompassing genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) is essential for investigating putative signal pathway regulations from a radiological viewpoint. In this review, we elaborate on the principal pathological categorizations of diffuse liver diseases, the evaluation of multiomics approaches pertaining to diffuse liver diseases, and the prospective value of predictive models. Accordingly, the overarching objective of this review is to scrutinize the interrelations between radiological features and bioinformatics as well as to consider the development of prediction models predicated on radiobioinformatics as integral components of clinical decision support systems for diffuse liver diseases.
(1) The review paper discusses the importance of radiobioinformatics, a technique that combines radiological features and bioinformatics in diagnosis and prognosis of diffuse liver diseases. (2) The paper elaborates on pathological categorizations of diffuse liver disease, evaluation of multiomics approaches, and potential value of predictive models. (3) The paper also demonstrates the role of artificial intelligence in improving the accuracy of medical imaging and the use of omics technologies for noninvasive biomarker discovery.
Hierarchical porous carbon materials belong to the potential candidate materials for advanced supercapacitors (SCs). The macro-meso-microporous structure of carbon materials is effective for ...improving electrochemical performance. We demonstrate a sustainable biomass conversion process and non-templated strategy to fabricate the macro-meso-microporous carbon aerogel (CA) through carbonization of the renewable natural alginate. The gelation process of the alginate hydrogel can offer a new strategy to create macro-mesoporous structures. After carbonizing at 800 °C, the as-prepared porous CA exhibits an excellent electrochemical performance in SCs.
•A strategy for fabricating the carbon aerogel (CA) through carbonizing alginate was proposed.•The strategy includes a sustainable biomass conversion and is non-templated.•The CA has 3D hierarchical structure containing inter-connected meso-micropores.•The 3D structure is beneficial for the increased specific capacitance and improved rate performance.•The prepared porous CA exhibits excellent electrochemical performance in SCs.
Accurate segmentation of the renal cancer structure, including the kidney, renal tumors, veins, and arteries, has great clinical significance, which can assist clinicians in diagnosing and treating ...renal cancer. For accurate segmentation of the renal cancer structure in contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) images, we proposed a novel encoder-decoder structure segmentation network named MDM-U-Net comprising a multi-scale anisotropic convolution block, dual activation attention block, and multi-scale deep supervision mechanism. The multi-scale anisotropic convolution block was used to improve the feature extraction ability of the network, the dual activation attention block as a channel-wise mechanism was used to guide the network to exploit important information, and the multi-scale deep supervision mechanism was used to supervise the layers of the decoder part for improving segmentation performance. In this study, we developed a feasible and generalizable MDM-U-Net model for renal cancer structure segmentation, trained the model from the public KiPA22 dataset, and tested it on the KiPA22 dataset and an in-house dataset. For the KiPA22 dataset, our method ranked first in renal cancer structure segmentation, achieving state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance in terms of 6 of 12 evaluation metrics (3 metrics per structure). For the in-house dataset, our method achieves SOTA performance in terms of 9 of 12 evaluation metrics (3 metrics per structure), demonstrating its superiority and generalization ability over the compared networks in renal structure segmentation from contrast-enhanced CT scans.
•A novel network named MDM-U-Net was proposed for the segmentation of renal cancer structure in contrast-enhanced CT images.•We designed multi-scale anisotropic convolution and dual activation attention block to learn important feature information.•Our method ranked the first place in the Kidney PArsing Challenge 2022 (https://kipa22.grand-challenge.org/awards-and-results/).
In this paper, a miniaturized electron optic tracking system (EOTS) is proposed to improve the disturbance suppression performance when attached to near space aerostat. The electron optic tracking ...system, widely used in moving platforms can isolate the movement of the carrier and has high stability accuracy. However, the payload weight is limited for near space aerostats. The miniaturization of EOTS can effectively improve load distribution. To satisfy the demand of lightweight, micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) accelerometer is used in EOTS instead of fiber-optic gyroscopes (FOG). This paper employs position and acceleration double close-loop control method with MEMS linear accelerometer to improve the system performance especially in medium frequency. Meanwhile the disturbance observer (DOB) is introduced to suppress the measurably external disturbance. Furthermore, the disturbance performance of the EOTS is verified by MATLAB/Simulink. The results show that the improved miniaturized system can increase the payload of the aerostat effectively when the total load is limited.
The motor parameters in the calculation of virtual signal injection control are nominal values constant, which will cause parameter errors by different operation of the motor, so it hard to achieve ...accurate MTPA control. In this paper, we scrutinize the impact of motor parameter alterations on the current angle under the application of the virtual signal injection method. An augmented algorithm for virtual signal injection, integrated with parameter estimation compensation, is introduced. This algorithm mitigates the current angle error instigated by motor parameter fluctuations, thereby enhancing the efficiency and precision of virtual signal injection.
In order to improve the efficiency and quality of underwater operations, this paper proposes and designs a new underwater robot, the navigation and crawl underwater unmanned vehicle (NCUUV), it has ...two motion modes: swimming and crawling. The upper controller selects the CPG network in the middle controller according to the height information by the acoustic rangefinder. The middle controller includes two CPG networks, which control the swimming and crawling of NCUUV respectively. The CPG network selected by the upper controller gradually vibrates, and the vibration of the unselected CPG network is gradually suppressed, thereby completing the smooth switching between swimming and crawling. The experimental result shows that this control mechanism of motion mode switching can enable NCUUV to stably realize motion mode switching and the switching process is smooth and reliable.
Electroantennogram responses of fall webworms（Hyphantria cunea） to 55 host volatile compounds were conducted.Results showed that male moths were more responsive to trans-2-hexenyl ...acetate,nonanal,hexanal,trans-2-hexenal,hexanol,isoamyl acetate,acetic acid cis-3-hexenyl ester,ethyl acetoacetate,citronellal and（＋）-citronellal,and females were more responsive to hexanol,hexanal,acetophenone,isoamyl acetate,nonanal,trans-2-hexenal,acetic acid cis-3-hexenyl ester,citronellal,cis-3-hexen1-ol and trans-2-hexen-1-ol.Seven bioactive compounds were also selected for further dosage response experiments,and a positive correlation was found between the fall webworm and the tested compounds.A maximum dosage level of 1000 g was tested and found to elicit significantly higher activity from male moths compared with lower（1,10,100 g） concentrations.
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