Liver cirrhosis is a common chronic progressive liver disease in clinical practice, and intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) is a promising magnetic resonance method to assess liver cirrhosis, so our purpose was to investigate association of liver-lobe-based IVIM-derived parameters with hepatitis-B-related cirrhosis and its severity, and esophageal and gastric fundic varices. Seventy-four patients with hepatitis-B-related cirrhotic and 25 healthy volunteers were enrolled and underwent upper abdominal IVIM diffusion-weighted imaging with b-values of 0, 20, 50, 80, 100, 200, 400, 600, and 800 s/mm. IVIM-derived parameters (D, pure molecular diffusion; D, pseudo diffusion; and f, perfusion fraction) of left lateral lobe (LLL), left medial lobe (LML), right lobe (RL), and caudate lobe (CL) were assessed statistically to show their associations with cirrhosis and its severity, and esophageal and gastric fundic varices. In this research, we found that D, D, and f values of LLL, LML, RL, and CL were lower in cirrhotic liver than in normal liver (all P-values <.05). D, D, and f values of LLL, LML, RL, and CL were inversely correlated with Child-Pugh class of cirrhosis (r = -0.236 to -0.606, all P-values <.05). D of each liver lobe, D of LLL and CL, and f of LLL, LML, and CL in patients with esophageal and gastric fundic varices were lower than without the varices (all P-values <.05). D values of RL and CL could best identify cirrhosis, and identify esophageal and gastric fundic varices with areas under receiver-operating characteristic curve of 0.857 and 0.746, respectively. We concluded that liver-lobe-based IVIM-derived parameters can be associated with cirrhosis, and esophageal and gastric fundic varices.
This study aimed to determine whether dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) derived parameters can identify oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and lymphatic metastasis. Thirty-nine oesophageal SCC patients underwent DCE-MRI. Quantitative parameters including endothelial transfer constant (Ktrans), reflux rate (Kep), fractional extravascular extracellular space volume and fractional plasma volume, and semi-quantitative parameters including time to peak (TTP), max concentration, Max Slope and area under concentration-time curve of both oesophageal SCC and normal oesophagus were measured. Mann-Whitney U test revealed that Ktrans and Kep of oesophageal SCC were higher while TTP was shorter when compared to normal oesophagus (all P-values < 0.05); and areas under receiver operating characteristic [ROC] curves displayed that Kep was superior to TTP or Ktrans for identifying oesophageal SCC (0.903 vs. 0.832 or 0.713). Mann-Whitney U test also demonstrated that Kep was higher and TTP was shorter in patients with lymphatic metastasis when compared to non-metastatic cancer patients (both P-values < 0.05), and area under ROC curve also showed that TTP was superior to Kep for predicting lymphatic metastasis (0.696 vs. 0.659). In conclusion, the combination of quantitative and semi-quantitative parameters derived from DCE-MRI can aid in the identification of oesophageal SCC and lymphatic metastasis.
The similarities and differences between 16V280ZJA and 16V240ZJ diesel engine in terms of technical parameters,constructures,characteristics and repair,are all analysed for the benefit of the application and maintenance departments.
This study adopted the revised Self-assessment of Family Dynamics (SSFD), the Centre for Evaluation of Streaming Depression (CES-D), and the Chinese version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Indicator (IRI-C) by Zeng Weinan and others to investigate the family dynamics, depressive status, and empathy of college students in Sichuan, Chongqing, and Guizhou. The results showed that: (1) Male students’ cognitive empathy scores were significantly lower than female students; (2) The overall depression score of college students in Chongqing municipality was significantly lower than that of college students in Sichuan and Guizhou provinces; (3) Higher vocational college students’ depression scores were significantly lower than undergraduate college students; (4) The overall depression scores of college students from rural areas were significantly higher than those of college students from urban areas; (5) The only child had significantly lower depression scores than the non-only child, and significantly higher scores on all dimensions of systemic family dynamics than the non-only child; (6) Depression had a highly significant correlation with all dimensions of family dynamics traits, and depression was highly significantly associated with cognitive empathy; (7) Cognitive empathy partially mediated the relationship between illness conceptions, systemic logic, and depression, with the proportion of indirect effect accounting for the total effect of 9.18% and 2.64% respectively.
Exclusion Basis Systems (EBS) is a combinatorial optimization methodology for key management of group communication. The EBS approach proves to be very scalable for large networks and enables great flexibility in network management. But it is highly vulnerable to collusion attacks. In this paper, a novel secure group management scheme based on EBS and attribute encryption is proposed. Our proposed scheme provides group forward/backward secrecy, and it is resilience to colluding attacks. Moreover, compared to some previous approaches, performance evaluation shows that our scheme is more efficient in communication (O(m) for single leave), storage (O(k) for each group member), and computation (O(k) for each group member), where k and m are the number of the attributes that each member holds or not. As k and m could be relatively small even in large-scale systems, so as to our new scheme works well in large-scale applications.
Objectives Few studies have explored whether the risk of myocardial infarction (MI) or stroke varies among patients with degenerative aortic valve disease (DAVD) with different severity of aortic regurgitation (AR) or not. Thus, a prospective study was conducted to elucidate the causal relationship between AR severity and risk of incident MI and stroke among patients with DAVD recruited from a general population in Northeast China. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting Community-based study carried out in rural areas of Northeast China. Methods There were 3675 patients with DAVD aged ≥45 years eligible for the prospective study. During a median follow-up time of 4.64 years, 99 participants lost to follow-up. Cox regression analyses were used to investigate the association between baseline AR severity and the risk of incident MI or stroke. Results In the final cohort of 3576 patients with DAVD, there were 3153 patients without AR (88.2%), 386 patients with mild AR (10.8%) and 37 patients with moderate or severe AR (1.0%). Multivariate analyses showed that, compared with participants without AR, those with moderate/severe AR were associated with 8.33 and 6.22-fold increased risk of MI and MI mortality, respectively. However, no significant associations between AR and the risk of stroke or stroke mortality were observed. Conclusions As compared with no AR, moderate/severe AR but not mild AR was an independent predictor for the risk of MI and MI mortality. AR was not significantly associated with stroke or stroke mortality, irrespective of AR severity. Secondary prevention strategies should be taken to delay the progression of DAVD and thus reduce the incidence of MI.
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