Clinical Application of Circulating Tumour Cells in Prostate Cancer: From Bench to Bedside and Back

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men worldwide. To improve future drug development and patient management, surrogate biomarkers associated with relevant outcomes are required. Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) are tumour cells that can enter the circulatory system, and are principally responsible for the development of metastasis at distant sites. In recent years, interest in detecting CTCs as a surrogate biomarker has ghiiukjrown. Clinical studies have revealed that high levels of CTCs in the blood correlate with disease progression in patients with prostate cancer; however, their predictive value for monitoring therapeutic response is less clear. Despite the important progress in CTC clinical development, there are critical requirements for the implementation of their analysis as a routine oncology tool. The goal of the present review is to provide an update on the advances in the clinical validation of CTCs as a surrogate biomarker and to discuss the principal obstacles and main challenges to their inclusion in clinical practice.     

Evaluation of two Compton camera models for scintimammography

We study the performance of a Si/LaBr₃:Ce Compton camera model for scintimammography, and compare it with a Si/NaI(Tl) model of similar geometry. The GEANT4 simulation toolkit was used to study the behaviour of the cameras at 511 keV. Certain simulation steps, such as the modelling of radionuclide decay times, scintillation photon transport and interactions with photomultipliers, as well as detector dead time corrections were included to make the modelling of the cameras more realistic than previous studies. The Si/LaBr₃:Ce Compton camera shows superior efficiency of 2.0×10⁻³ and resolution of 5.3 mm over the Si/NaI(Tl) Compton camera model which has the efficiency of 1.6×10⁻³ and resolution of 6.9 mm at a source-to-scatterer distance of interest, 2.5 cm. A similar result sequence is obtained for two breast tumours of 5 mm diameter embedded in the medial region of an average-size breast phantom of thickness 5 cm. Notably, the signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) obtained for the Si/LaBr₃:Ce camera are 9.7 and 3.4 for tumour/background radiation uptakes of 10:1 and 6:1, whereas 6.8 and 2.4 were obtained for the Si/NaI(Tl) camera model for the same tumour/background radiation uptakes respectively. It is therefore envisioned that with lower cost, LaBr₃:Ce could replace NaI(Tl) as the Compton camera absorber.     

Detection of brain tumour from MRI image using modified region growing and neural network

Abstract

Region growing is an important application of image segmentation in medical research for detection of tumour. In this paper, we propose an effective modified region growing technique for detection of brain tumour. It consists of four steps which includes: (i) pre-processing; (2) modified region growing by the inclusion of an additional orientation constraint in addition to the normal intensity constrain; (3) feature extraction of the region; and (4) final classification using the neural network. The performance of the proposed technique is systematically evaluated using the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain images received from the public sources. For validating the effectiveness of the modified region growing, we have considered the quantity rate parameter. For the evaluation of the proposed technique of tumour detection, we make use of sensitivity, specificity and accuracy values which we compute from finding out false positive, false negative, true positive and true negative. Comparative analyses were made of the normal and the modified region growing using both the Feed Forward Neural Network (FFNN) and Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural network. From the results obtained, we could see that the proposed technique achieved the accuracy of 80% for the testing dataset, which clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of the modified region growing when compared to the normal technique.     

磁性纳米材料及其在癌症诊疗中的应用

磁性纳米材料在不同的尺寸下分别呈现出铁磁性和超顺磁性。介绍了不同形式和用途的磁性纳米材料,包括磁性纳米颗粒、磁性脂质体、磁流体、铁磁微晶玻璃、碳铁复合物、超顺磁性氧化铁等,并对近年来磁性纳米材料在磁共振成像、肿瘤细胞分离、肿瘤靶向热疗、栓塞治疗及药物磁导向方面的应用进行了综述。总结了磁性纳米材料在癌症诊断及治疗中的作用和面临的困难,并对磁性纳米材料在深部肿瘤的诊断及癌症的联合治疗、基因治疗等应用方向进行了展望。     

用文王八卦分析乳房疾病热图

笔者利用AGA红外热象仪检查了200多例妇女乳房疾病患者,经对乳房热图的统计分析,发现乳房肿瘤的常发区域在:外上象限45～50％,内上象限12～15％,乳头乳晕区15～20％。这一结论不仅符合乳房生理解剖学理论,而且与古老的文王八卦方位结构规律有着惊人的吻合之处。笔者根据文王八卦的宇宙、人体全息的概念,分析热图,并对50例病人进行了治疗的尝试,受益匪浅     

纳米材料在肿瘤磁热疗中的应用及展望

对磁热疗以及纳米材料在磁热疗领域的应用情况进行了综述,着重介绍了磁流体、磁性脂质体、肿瘤靶向磁性纳米粒子及低居里点磁性纳米粒子,同时就磁性材料的发展方向进行了展望。     

拉深模粘结瘤的形成及有效预防

叙述了拉深模粘结瘤的形成过程,介绍并分析了粘结瘤的特点及其粘着部位,并提出了有效的预防措施。