Spatial relationships between local features are thought to play a vital role in representing object categories. However, learning a compact set of higher-order spatial features based on visual ...words, e.g., doublets and triplets, remains a challenging problem as possible combinations of visual words grow exponentially. While the local pairwise codebook achieves a compact codebook of pairs of spatially close local features without feature selection, its formulation is not scale invariant and is only suitable for densely sampled local features. In contrast, the proximity distribution kernel is a scale-invariant and robust representation capturing rich spatial proximity information between local features, but its representation grows quadratically in the number of visual words. Inspired by the two abovementioned techniques, this paper presents the compact correlation coding that combines the strengths of the two. Our method achieves a compact representation that is scaleinvariant and robust against object deformation. In addition, we adopt sparse coding instead of k-means clustering during the codebook construction to increase the discriminative power of our method. We systematically evaluate our method against both the local pairwise codebook and proximity distribution kernel on several challenging object categorization datasets to show performance improvements.
Background The prevalence and indicative clinical factors of renal artery stenosis (RAS) in the Japanese population are unclear. Methods and Results The aim of this study was to investigate the ...prevalence of RAS in a selectively referred Japanese population and to determine any clinical factors related to RAS by initially screening with renal duplex ultrasonography. The 750 patients presenting because of possible or known cardio-and cerebrovascular diseases were prospectively studied. Duplex examination was performed in 729 patients (97.2%): 21 patients (2.8%) did not undergo it, because of technical impossibility. Duplex RAS was found in 38 patients (5.2%). Subsequently, a confirmatory renal angiography was obtained in 40 patients, investigating those who had duplex RAS or no duplex examination. Angiographic RAS was found in 35 patients (4.8%). The respective prevalences of duplex and angiographic RAS were 6.3% and 6.7% in coronary artery disease, 8.8% and 9.3% in multivessel coronary artery disease, 7.5% and 8.2% in heart failure, 5.1% and 4.3% in unstable angina pectoris, 20.0% and 22.2% in carotid artery stenosis, 10.3% and 10.2% in stroke, 20.0% and 20.0% in peripheral artery disease, and 12.0% and 11.8% in abdominal aortic aneurysm. Univariate analysis showed that patients with duplex RAS were older and had more atherosclerotic risk factors. Furthermore, they were more likely to be smokers and have hypertension, renal impairment, renal atrophy, left ventricular hypertrophy and cardio- and cerebrovascular diseases. Multivariate stepwise analysis showed that smoking, peripheral artery disease, abdominal aortic aneurysm and renal atrophy were independent predictors of duplex RAS. Conclusions RAS is frequent in Japanese patients with cardio- and cerebrovascular diseases. Initial screening for RAS by duplex ultrasonography is recommended for patients with complications, especially peripheral artery disease, abdominal aortic aneurysm and renal atrophy. (Circ J 2007; 71: 1942 - 1947)
Abstract Herein, we report the case of a 49-year-old woman with typical atrioventricular nodal (AVN) reentrant tachycardia, confined to the compact atrioventricular node, showing numerous rare ...electrophysiological findings such as unique AVN reentrant echoes, double ventricular responses, latent retrograde dual AVN pathways, antegrade triple AVN pathways, and longitudinal dissociation within the lower final common pathway.
The combination of a change in lifestyle toward Western habits and an aging society, has led to a steady increase in the incidence of atherosclerotic diseases in the Japanese population. Coronary ...artery disease (CAD), carotid stenosis (CS), and peripheral artery disease (PAD) are major manifestations of generalized atherosclerosis and increase the risk of cardiovascular events. However, the incidence of CS and PAD in Japanese patients with CAD is not well known, so the present study investigated this in 380 consecutive patients with CAD undergoing elective coronary aorta bypass grafting (CABG) at Kishiwada Tokushukai Hospital between October 1999 and October 2001. The coexistence of CS and PAD in all patients was preoperatively evaluated by duplex ultrasonography and the ankle - brachial index (ABI). The average age of the study population was 66.09.1 years (range, 42-87). The number of male patients was 293 (77.1%). The incidence of CS was 13.7% and 15.3% for PAD. Multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated that no particular traditional atherosclerotic risk factor, such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes mellitus, and smoking, was able to predict either CS or PAD, but CS and PAD were independent predictors of each other. The results of the study suggest that CS and PAD were not only highly prevalent but also strongly associated with each other in this cohort of CAD patients. Accordingly, extracoronary atherosclerotic disease should be assessed in Japanese CAD patients. (Circ J 2003; 67: 1003 - 1006)
: We investigated whether melatonin reduces the age‐related susceptibility of brain to oxidative DNA damage. Brain tissues and blood samples were obtained in the middle of dark period of the daily ...light:dark cycle from female senescence‐accelerated mice (SAM‐P/6) at ages 4, 8, and 12 months. Serum melatonin concentrations and the contents of deoxyguanosine (dG) and 8‐hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8‐OHdG) in DNA extracted from these brain homogenates were measured by high‐performance liquid chromatography. Contents of 8‐OHdG showed a significant age‐related increase (P < 0.001), while that of dG did not. The 8‐OHdG:dG ratio also exhibited a significant age‐related increase (P < 0.001). Serum melatonin concentration decreased markedly between 8 (159.7 ± 4.5 pg/mL) and 12 (46.8 ± 4.5 pg/mL) months of age (P < 0.0001). Oral melatonin administration (2 μg/mL in water) starting at 8 months of age, which produced a significant increase in serum melatonin concentration at 12 months (187.6 ± 18.3 pg/mL) compared with untreated animals (P < 0.0001), also resulted in significant decreases in brain 8‐OHdG contents and 8‐OHdG:dG ratios. These results indicate that administration of a physiologic dose of melatonin to SAM‐P/6 mice may prevent the age‐related oxidative DNA damage in the brain.
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