Visualizing veins from color skin images using convolutional neural networks

Intravenous cannulation is the most important phase in medical practices.Currently,limited literature is available about visibility of veins and the characteristics of patients associated with difficult intravenous access.In modern medical treatment,a major challenge is locating veins for patients who have difficult venous access.Presently,some products of vein locators are available in the market to improve vein access,but they need auxiliary equipment such as near infrared(NIR)illumination and camera,which add weight and cost to the devices,and cause inconveniences to daily medical care.In this paper,a vein visualization algorithm based on the deep learning method was proposed.Based on a group of synchronous RGB/NIR arm images,a convolutional neural network(CNN)model was designed to implement the mapping from RGB to NIR images,where veins can be detected from skin.The model has a simple structure and less optimization parameters.A color transfer scheme was also proposed to make the network adaptive to the images taken by smartphone in daily medical treatments.Comprehensive experiments were conducted on three datasets to evaluate the proposed method.Subjective and objective evaluations showed the effec-tiveness of the proposed method.These results indicated that the deep learning-based method can be used for visualizing veins in medical care applications.

Simultaneously measuring ocular aberration and anterior segment biometry during accommodation

In the human eye,accommodation is essential for functional vision.However,the mechanisms regulating accommodation and the ocular parameters afcting aberrations remain to be ex-plored.In order to measure the alterations of ocular aberration and crystalline lens biometry during dynamic acoommodative stimuli,we designed an optical coberence tomography with ultra-long penetration depth(UL-OCT)combined with a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor(SHWFS).This integrated set up measures human eye's anterior segment as well as mono-chromatie high-order aberrations(HOAs)with 6 um resolution and(1/20)λaccuracy.A total of 10 healthy volunteers without ocular diseases were examined.Upon exposure to accommodative stimuli,the wavefront aberrations became larger.Among the anterior segment biometry,the anterior crystalline lens demonstrated significant curvature during accommodation and was the major cause of high-order aberration.These findings suggest that the front surface of the crys-talline lens can siguificantly affect variation among aberrations,which is a key factor underlying the quality of human vision.

Early embryonic transcriptomes of Zeugodacus tau provide insight into sex determination and differentiation genes

Zeugodacus tau(Walker)is an invasive pest.The sterile insect technique is an environment-friendly method for pest control.Understanding the mechanism of sex determination will contribute to improving efficiency of this technique.In this study,we identified the transformer(tra)gene in Z.tau.One female-specific and two male-specific isoforms of tra were found in Z.tau,and the male-specific splicing pattern of tra was found to occur 5 h after egg laying.We performed transcriptome sequencing at 1 h(E1),5 h(E5),and 9 h(E9)after egg laying and obtained high-quality transcriptome libraries of early embryo development.We identified 13297 and 11713 differentially expressed genes(DEGs)from E5 versus E1 and E9 versus E1 comparisons,respectively.To explore the potential functions of the DEGs during embryonic development,Gene Ontology,Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins,and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analyses were performed.Twenty-six genes potentially involved in sex determination or differentiation,including Maleness-on-the-Y(MoY),were identified in Z.tau.To verify the transcriptome results,15 genes were selected for quantitative real-time PCR validation.The results were consistent with the transcriptome sequencing results.Moreover,U2 small nuclear riboprotein auxiliary factor(U2AF-50),female lethal d(fl(2)d),and virilizer(vir)were highly expressed at E5,indicating that they may be related to the sex-specific splicing of tra.Further functional analysis is needed to confirm this speculation.Our data provide an insight into the mechanism underlying sex determination and differentiation in tephritid species.

Effect of Pd content on crystallization and shape memory properties of Ti-Ni-Pd thin films

The Pd content dependence of the crystallization process of Ti–Ni–(19.1–35.3)Pd(at.%)thin films fabricated by a sputter-deposition method was investigated.Ti–Ni–(19.1–26.1)Pd(at.%)as-deposited thin films were found to be amorphous,whereas Ti–Ni–(29.1–35.3)Pd(at.%)thin films were crystalline in the as-deposited condition.Both the crystallization temperature and activation energy for the crystallization of the amorphous thin films decrease with increasing Pd content.The shape memory effect was confirmed in the in situ crystallized thin film.The finer grain size in the in situ crystallized thin film results in a higher critical stress for slip and a smaller recovery strain when compared with the thin film crystallized by post annealing.