MR imaging provides a means of noninvasive imaging of the salivary glands with excellent spatial resolution and soft tissue contrast. The goals of salivary gland cancer imaging are two-fold: ...histological differential diagnosis, and localization and determination of the extent of the tumors. We describe the radiologic information essential for devising a treatment plan and choosing the surgical technique.
To date, only a few reports have been published on osteonecrosis occurring in the first metatarsal. We treated a patient with secondary osteonecrosis of the first metatarsal.
A 54-year-old man ...developed osteonecrosis of the first metatarsal. He had a history of corticosteroid use but no history of trauma or other predisposing conditions for osteonecrosis. His foot condition was rare because osteonecrosis directly developed under the articular surface facing the hallux sesamoid bones, not in the epiphyseal region of the first metatarsal head. High-dose corticosteroid treatment was considered the primary cause. Conservative treatment with a shoe insert and daily activity restrictions showed excellent results, thereby leading to the complete disappearance of the bone lesion and pain.
This was a rare case of osteonecrosis that directly developed under the articular surface facing the hallux sesamoid bones, not in the epiphyseal region of the metatarsal head.
The regulatory interaction between gene expressions is considered as a universal mechanism in biological systems and such a mechanism of interactions has been modeled as gene regulatory networks. The ...gene regulatory networks show a correlation among gene expressions. A lot of methods to describe the gene regulatory network have been developed. Especially, owing to the technologies such as DNA microarrays that provide a number of time course data of gene expressions, the gene regulatory network models described by differential equations have been proposed and developed in recently. To infer such a gene regulatory network using differential equations, it is necessary to approximate many unknown functions from the time course data of gene expressions that is obtained experimentally. One of the successful inference methods of the gene regulatory networks is the method using the neural network. In this study, to improve a performance of the inference, we propose the inferring method of the gene regulatory networks using neural networks adopting a kind of majority rule. Simulation results show the validity of the proposed method.
The purpose of the present study was to develop a communication aid device utilizing event-related potentials (ERPs) for patients with severe motor disabilities. Preliminary experiments were ...performed on eight healthy volunteers to determine the optimal methods of presentation of visual stimuli and an off-line analysis of electroencephalography signals. Three clinical experiments were performed online on 17 healthy volunteers, 5 patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and 1 patient with olivopontocerebellar atrophy. First, one of four vertically aligned short expressions (“yes definitely,” “yes,” “no,” and “don't know”) was presented in a random sequence to determine the target. Second, a systematic table of 50 Japanese syllables, and third, 16 pictorial symbols in four columns were presented, with each column presented at random. The target was identified by the maximum sum of the 2–5 Hz power spectrum after fast Fourier transform of averaged ERPs. A high correct response rate was obtained in the clinical experiments of almost 100% in “yes or no” and pictorial symbol paradigms using seven averaged samples. These results indicate that such devices may be used to communicate with patients who have lost all ability to interact other than directly via the brain.