Pancreatic imaging:Current status of clinical practices and small animal studies

Different causative factors acting on the pancreas can result in diseases such as pancreatitis, diabetes and pancreatic tumors. The high incidence and mortality of pancreatic diseases have placed diagnostic imaging in a crucial position in daily clinical practice. In this minireview article different pancreatic imaging techniques are discussed, from the standard clinical imaging modalities and state of the art clinical magnetic resonance imaging techniques to current situations in pre-clinical pancreatic imaging studies. In particular, the challenges of pre-clinical rodent pancreatic imaging are addressed, with both the image acquisition techniques and the post-processing methods for rodent pancreatic imaging elaborated.

3D Reconstruction Technique for Tomographic PIV

Tomographic particle image velocimetry(Tomo-PIV) is a state-of-the-art experimental technique based on a method of optical tomography to achieve the three-dimensional(3D) reconstruction for threedimensional three-component(3D-3C) flow velocity measurements. 3D reconstruction for Tomo-PIV is carried out herein. Meanwhile, a 3D simplified tomographic reconstruction model reduced from a 3D volume light intensity field with 2D projection images into a 2D Tomo-slice plane with 1D projecting lines, i.e., simplifying this 3D reconstruction into a problem of 2D Tomo-slice plane reconstruction, is applied thereafter. Two kinds of the most well-known algebraic reconstruction techniques, algebraic reconstruction technique(ART) and multiple algebraic reconstruction technique(MART), are compared as well. The principles of the two reconstruction algorithms are discussed in detail, which has been performed by a series of simulation images, yielding the corresponding reconstruction images that show different features between the ART and MART algorithm, and then their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Further discussions are made for the standard particle image reconstruction when the background noise of the pre-initial particle image has been removed. Results show that the particle image reconstruction has been greatly improved. The MART algorithm is much better than the ART. Furthermore, the computational analyses of two parameters(the particle density and the number of cameras), are performed to study their effects on the reconstruction. Lastly, the 3D volume particle field is reconstructed by using the improved algorithm based on the simplified 3D tomographic reconstruction model, which proves that the algorithm simplification is feasible and it can be applied to the reconstruction of 3D volume particle field in a Tomo-PIV system.

Pictorial Versions of the Mulian Story in East Asia （Tenth--Seventeenth Centuries）： On the Connections of Religious Painting and Storytelling

In this paper, I analyze pictorial representations of the Buddhist story of Mulian rescuing his mother in China, Japan, and Korea in the pre-modern and early modern periods. I have collected several pictorial versions of the Mulian story in these countries, and comparison shows close proximity of several such works. All of them are related to the narrative texts that represent elaboration of the originally scriptural story （it originated in the apocryphal Buddhist scripture that circulated in China） in vernacular languages. Images of the Mulian story in the countries of East Asia had diverse nature： they could appear as separate scenes in devotional religious paintings, multi-scene handscrolls, and illustrations in the manuscripts and editions. I argue that the subject of Mulian rescuing his mother was of primary importance in the popularization of Buddhist ideas among different layers of society. The related images were used for both storytelling and reading practices and helped different audiences to comprehend the Mulian story.